New to the game and been trying to learn how to participate in the Multiplayer games as they are so different to the AI local games. What I have found so far is that a) some players setup rooms for noobs just to slaughter them and then other players seem to develop at impossibly fast speeds.
This makes me think its not just my noobness and general poor ability to play the game but cheating seems to be prolific throughout the game, is this other peoples view?
Welcome to multiplayer. I don’t think there is much cheating, but there is an extremely wide range of skill. Some players have been practicing for over 20 years.
I’ll agree that “noob” lobbies are often just players looking for an easy opponent. I’d highly recommend trying ranked multiplayer instead. You’ll probably lose the first few games as the system finds your skill level, then after that it will provide generally even matchups where you’ll win about 50% of the time. It’s also nice to see your rank go up as you improve.
If you play ranked, cheating shouldn’t be possible without really really obvious stuff you can see in a recorded game (massive amounts of free res, desyncing the other player/deleting all their units, and this kind of stuff is really rare usually). Those kinds of cheats as a whole are rare. In a lobby, it’s always possible that cheats are enabled, but that’s unlikely. I just wouldn’t use lobbies at all, they suck, play ranked 1v1s, far better, and you’ll reach a balanced elo after a while where everyone will be roughly your skill level.
Which AI difficulty did you play against? Especially on difficulties such as Moderate they rather build up slowly.
I highly recommend staying away from “noob” lobbies.
As weird as it may sound - the most balanced place where you eventually end up against players with similar skill is ranked. Be aware that the first 10 games are tough as during these games you get a wider range of player skills before you eventually get matched up against players on your level.
As Conqueror said, cheating is normally super obvious as in replays you’ll see any suspicious behaviour such as infinite resources, being able to research the same tech over and over again etc.
I just think you need a bit more practice 
If you like, you can post a .aoe2record file of one of your games, so players can give you tips on how to improve your gameplay!
Don’t go to noob lobbies. A lot of players there are not noobs. Also ot is hard to define clearly how noob is noob. Most of the time whoever that has ranked elo above 1000 will be kicked. (I am 1337 elo and I get kicked >95% of the time from lobbies). However those unranked accounts can sneak into noob lobbies but they are not actual noobs.
This is why the lobby is a toxic place. No noobs hosting noob lobbies to slaughter noobs. Dont play in the lobby, but go for ranked.
Ranked sound scary, but it isnt. Ranked is just a match making system based in matching players on equal skill. In the first game the system tries to estimate your skill. These games might be one sided. After the first games the system can estimate your skills pretty accurate and you play against equally skilled players.
This way you can get much better balanced games. You wont notice many noob slaughters anymore.
I dont think cheating is a real issue into the game. I havent notice it many times. Not claiming the game is cheat free, but it isnt as bad as you describe. It is probably a lack of skills on your end. I doesnt meant to be mean with that. Many players play this games for years and years. If you are new to the game, then it might be hard to learn the game. So i want to give you some general tips:
I’ve just discovered that the AI currently seems to have a thing where it actually does stuff slower (such as building, creating vils, and researching techs). For the easiest AI, this is about twice the normal time, for standard it’s about 33% longer, and about 16% longer for moderate. Hard, Hardest, and Extreme don’t have any modifier such as this. So if you’ve been playing on lower difficulties recently, it may actually be that you’ve become accustomed to the AI negatively handicapping itself, which doesn’t impact humans.
This thread also highlights the fact that the lobby is not (and never will be) a viable alternative to the ranked ladder. So stop bringing up lobbies as an argument against more map bans / infinite map bans, because it’s not a valid point.
I think we should take away the fear of new players to play ranked, because with ranked there is always this tryhard-esque image.
Well guys (in the collection of individuals sense not the group of men meaning). thanks for the insights I’ll give ranked games ago, to me ranked sounded like top 100 or something which I definitely ain’t lol
There are currently 45k+ players on the ranked 1v1 ladder, so you’ll have everything across each skill level Have fun!
Unless there’s a community! Of course, most people in communities are already relatively good compared to beginners, but I wouldn’t write lobbies off completely.
Generally if you’d want to play in lobbies, just join those that have an actual elo range in place. People who have no rank (but do have a rating) can be smurfs or better/worse than their rating, but those who have an active rank (you see the rank instead of a dashed line) you can be sure are at that rating, especially when they have a lot of games and a normal winrate. People with few games but a very high winrate are more suspicious for smurfing.
If you don’t have a map preference, Ranked ladder is the best option for the fairest of teams without any hassle. You can still get some smurfs now and then, though. 1v1s might be the best since how much you tryhard is only determined by how much you care about your rating, whereas in ranked teamgames you’ll also have to worry about your teammates tryharding and thus tilting if they lose.
Well I have tried it… it makes no difference… players seem to be able to grow to 2000,3000 military with 6000 economy in the same amount of time I manage to get 800 military and I am maxing out resource gathering so I can level up quicker…
Deeply disappointed and don’t need my ass handed to me anymore so I think I will call it quits cos this clearly isnt for me.
Maybe I should go find settlers… or find a game where there is interest in building your village into a town and collecting resources so you can stand a chance at defending yourself.
Feel free to post a replay file, maybe there’s something you missing where we can help you!
Sounds like you’re focusing too much on your economy and not scouting the opponent to see what he’s doing so you can prepare counter units. Also I imagine you have a lot of town centre idle time, since that is almost always the number 1 problem with new players.