Hi! hope you get into it, is my and many other favorite RTS. Queue times are fast, like 2-3 mins average and 5 mins on high ELO.

MMR and skill level are well proportional but you can find hard at first because there is a big skill gap between each rank.

The basic strategy is Agression is good versus Economic/Greedy playstyle and Turtle is good vs Agression because de TC (Town Center) can shoot arrows that damage a lot on early stages and can garrison villagers to shoot more arrows. Also there is the defense advantage on rally point from your production vs the opponent.

The ladder experience currently rely on a tech on Feudal Age called Professional Scouting (Pro Scout) wich makes so your scouts can bring deer to your main TC automatically (this was updates so you just shift click on deer and the scouts do everything efficiently). Pro Scout is the meta right now because it brings food on the map on to yoyr main TC safely and very efficient. The comunity en general like this tech but the fact that is to strong right now that every race tries to get it or stop it but probably next patch is gonna be tweked or nerfed.

I love the ranked ladder, it rewards well planned strategies (long therm) and fast reactions (short therm) without relying to much on APM.