Have a look at your own stats on the Aoe2 Companion app and check your win rate % vs. Franks and compare it to your win rate against other civs. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find that your stats are pretty balanced and the Franks are OP thing is mainly in your head. The raw stats should show you that it’s not specifically a Franks problem. I am low ELO 1000 - 1100 and Franks is my No.1 most common opponent with 38 games played against them, yet my win rate against them is 55%. Surely if Franks were that OP, a low skilled / low ELO player like me would not be beating them in 55% of games. And I rarely play Britons or meso civs. Seriously, check your stats, you will be surprised at how balanced your wins and losses are. And you might also be surprised that what you think are your strongest civs aren’t as strong as you think. And vice versa, your “weak” civs might not be as bad as you think.
That’s not how you assess a civ - based on one particular individual’s stats. If most players did well like you, winrates won’t be 50+ for Franks. Its based on large scale data from thousands of players averaged across a million games.
More players do well with Franks than against it and hence the strong play rate, win rate.
You might do well against Franks, someone else might have done well against Gurjaras, Poles or whatever civ got a nerf. But overall stats show that you’re one of the fewer players that do well against Franks. And in case if you’re winning against Franks with subpar civs like Vietnamese instead of counter civs like Gurjaras , you’re probably higher than what your current elo says.
Hera is a frank’s picker and his third highest win rate civ. [aM] Hera's profile - Age of Empires 2 - AoE2 Insights
Holy shit, you destroyed him. But let’s be clear, statistics are always more true than any pro’s opinion.
And stats say that franks are too good at all ELOS; Franks - 1v1 Random Map | ALL - aoestats
Lastly, “A civ is perfectly balanced for the top 10 people” is irrelevant to the balance of the civ. That doesn’t matter at all. If a civ isn’t balanced for 70%+ people, it isn’t balanced.