High activity is more rewarding on a slow world and gold goes further to boost you. During the first few weeks of a server, gold goes much further to give you an early edge. In the long term, high activity will earn me a position that's difficult to usurp. The gap between active-aggressive players and semi-active-turtles becomes much more apparent than on a world with faster settings. I've claimed top rankings and even if I go on VM for a month I can expect to remain in good standing. Olympia does not bore me. Like anything else, it's what you make of it. We have a variety of top alliances and a mixture of MRAs, not just Alliance A vs Alliance B, which I think is too simplistic and kills off a server faster than anything (as was the case with en38 Naxos).
Of comparable servers, en39 Olympia has very high activity with 4,349 active players. Worlds of similar age average around 2,000 players.
Settings: Speed - 1; Unit Speed - 1; Alliance Cap - 200; Beginners Protection: 6 Days; Revolt; Morale - Active
Players that enjoy small worlds complain that there are too many server launches for good reason. If my enemy is getting spanked (as in my case), it's easy for them to jump ship and start in a more favorable position on a new world. Frequent server launches rob me of active players, both ally and enemy, and it devalues my long term investment.
Spamming new servers will split the pool of active players with every launch. Mature worlds are fun, but if there are only a few hundred active players in the later stages it leaves us with an anti-climactic ending. It's hard enough to reliably maintain active players for two years to complete the age of wonders.