Portal: cannot populate the game with bots on smaller servers

Yeah, Ive created so many that I can connect to, but im stuck waiting at 24/32 players. A few people join for a minute but leave bc whos gonna sit here for 2 hours waiting? This is not a good system. I know these guys can afford more servers with all the $70 copies they just sold. But on the other hand, the games not even a week old but come on, were all sitting here with our thumbs up our **bleep** waiting to play our servers.