@samboleary
Have you noticed this in AOW matchmaking. ?
I have mostly been playing World Tour so not tried AOW Conquest since start of S7.
One of the main benefits of World Tour is the fact that once you are in a server you can play through the whole map rotation without being sent back to the lobby after every round. World Tour also has a one player start which saves all the hanging around in the lobby waiting for players. Once started it fills up pretty quickly with players replacing the AI bots.
Imho the sooner they bring a proper Server Browser and Persistent Servers to AOW the better to allow all players to have access in all regions.