Great Wall of Text: Learning AoE2 - Share your thoughts.

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A while back I made a tool to show Build Orders on top of Age of Empires (named Border). I got quite a bit of feedback on that, all of which lead to new features being implemented, and I have been ready to release for about two months.
Why haven't I?
Well, besides that rule that doesn't allow you to solely do self-promotion, I wanted to make a tool that helps you get competitive. But Border isn't enough.
As a kid, like many of you, I played quite a bit of AoE2 (or in my case mostly AoM). I didn't know anything about Build Orders. I did know a bit about unit counters and hotkeys though, but online that just isn't enough. The main difference? The game actually tells you about hotkeys and counters, but but Build Orders are a meta-thing, something you know exists but you will have to figure it out yourself (or ask St4rk, though pausing and resuming YT vids during game play is far from ideal).
Since build orders are very important for any player to be able to win games, even at slightly-better-than-beginner-level (it seems most online players try to be competitive) I felt we (or at least I) needed a way to get those visible in the game, making learning them a lot easier. Which is exactly what I did with Border.
Although I knew it from the start, after learning quite a few build orders I realised that Build Orders are only important for the first bit of gameplay, and the moment I encounter my enemy I will have to adapt. Heck, even before that, bad map, civ matchup, civ bonus. And when my build order is done, I'm done too. I have no proper feel for spending my resources, so my late game is garbage.
So I feel that in addition to learning build orders (and hotkeys and counters) I should learn production values. E.g.: "For 2 range continuous Archer production I need X villagers on Wood and Y villagers on Gold." Since I've never seen anyone talk about this, I assume it gets quite complex fast (farms require wood, civ bonuses, eco upgrades). (Well, I heard "Wheelbarrow equals 5 villagers", but in addition to being vague, it doesn't make sense to me - it scales.) From a tool/game design perspective showing the current resource income would help, and the average cost of a unit per minute. But, yes, this lowers the knowledge barrier, which is what is one of the things that makes AoE2 such a great game to play.
On the other hand, maybe we should have streamers purely focussed to teach us things. Now that we are e-sports maybe we need a Jayne of our own (yes, Overwatch is a great game, shut up) , to give us advanced insights, learn us tricks that only the pros use and even most of them don't know about. 1-on-1 training, what to communicate, what habits to learn, what habits to forget.
There should be a line between the game telling you what to do and the community teaching you. I think the game should tell you a bit more about build orders and perfecting your eco. Established e-sports like Starcraft 2 (shows used build order in post game) and DotA2 (can show build in game) already have features like this.
(__TL;DR starts here__)
I'm not sure what is needed to make learning this game easier, allowing for more people to join this game. I have a lot of ideas, but I'm not sure. So I need thoughts, _your_ thoughts. What did you struggle with when just starting out. What do you struggle with now? What (information) do you think would help you get better? Did you notice what held people back from playing AoE2 (competively)?
I would love to see this community grow. I want DE to have features to making getting into this game (I keep on dreaming). So if I can do something to make the first few hurdles a bit lower, I will do so.