The problem:
Unlike in rush, not all the maps in the Standard Maps pool work for treaty.
This is forcing a lot of treaty players to resort exclusively to the lobby for games (and that has its own host of issues). Just look at the high-skilled treaty streamers on Twitch. In Oct and Nov, they were still bothering with quick search, but these days, you will rarely see treaty players streaming quick search.
In comparison, the top rush streamers almost always still play via quick search. Just scan through their streams over the past three months on Twitch.
Alternative that is worse:
On the other hand, if you choose to go to the lobby, you almost always end up with very imbalanced skill levels in the game, unless you choose to play with and against only players you already know.
Essentially, there is no way for treaty players to reliably get a decent game (both quick search and the lobby screws them).
Also, I feel like a good number of those still asking for a ranked lobby are treaty players (this is my guess based on three posts I’ve seen in the past week), but they are asking for a solution that’s too far from the original vision of AOE 3 DE multiplayer.
Conclusion:
Treaty games in quick search shouldn’t be spawning into maps like Artic Territories or Great Lakes (that is, Standard Maps). This has killed quick search (as can be seen his the trend from treaty streamers). This is clearly a very terrible oversight from the developers. This is tantamount to a design bug. I hope this reaches them.
There is already a Treaty Maps pool and all the maps are at least decent for treaty. Why is this not the map pool for Treaty QS?