I haven’t played a ton lately, but there are definitely balance issues that weren’t dealt with when the devs canceled the planned DLC and seemingly any chance of future updates.
As I recall though, Germany is up there with the better 1v1 civs atm, but yeah, I think USA and definitely Otto are stronger.
Unfortunately, “get good” or “play op civs” is the best advice I can give you.
Something of note, sometimes you can just naked ff with Germany while raiding with some shipment Uhlans. 8 skirms or 3 War Wagons (plus a trained batch) can be pretty nice for dealing with Musketeer pushes if you micro well enough. Also I know not everyone does a good job protecting vills. I was like 1400-1600 elo for a long time and have gotten messed up pretty badly by raids before. If you assume your raid will yield nothing, and I predict you won’t raid, then I won’t make units (ie make more eco or age instead), which then gives your raid a better chance of success.