‘The second level is much, much harder than it used to be’.
Yup. That’s why I quit playing. I play on ‘moderate’ (the third level) on ‘III’ but I can’t play on the second level on IV.
To answer your question about ‘should I find a different game to play’ - it’s early days but I’m enjoying AOM:R.
I remember this exact complaint from AoE2 players a while ago, because they didn’t understand that in team games it’s the whole team’s rating that counts, not each guy’s rating. It’s how it works there and how it works in AoE4 (same matchmaking system btw). Not sure for AoE3.
There is a definite problem with the levels of difficulty in AoE3 as ‘moderate’ is easy and ‘hard’ is impossible ! Surely there must be a level in between !