Anyone agree the Dark Age is too slow and too formulaic/boring? Should it be made quicker?

It's been a while since I played ranked random map aoe2, but IIRC you spend the first few minutes of the game doing exactly the same thing. Even builds like drush vs fc vs flush vs dock+fishing, will play the exact same way for the first few minutes. Build 2 houses, eat sheep with 6, lumbercamp with 4, boar with 8, etc.

It puts me off returning to the game a little bit. AoE3 was a worse game but I think its faster 1st age was definitely an improvement. An AoE2 match really kicks off when you reach Feudal, and you reach Feudal with between 20 and 30 villagers. But at the start of the game you only have 3, which seems a little... unnecessarily low?

Would the game be better if you started with, say, 10 villagers and 2 houses? It'd be great to have it as an option in the lobby, alongside options like starting age, map etc.

Only problems I can see, is it would be a stealth nerf to Chinese and would give less time for dark age scouting.