Playing Steam version of AOMEE - massive lag and disconnection issues

Title, basically.

Never had this sort of problem a few months ago when I was playing competitively. I have a friend on Steam who I invite to games I create - but as of the past week or so, the lag and disconnections from Steam are making the game unplayable.

Sometimes we can't even create games due to:

"Failed to Create Game - General Error"

And if we're lucky enough to get into a game and play for a few mintues, the lag is bad enough to say that one player is "not responding" and gives a 30sec timer which always runs out - resulting in the involuntary resignation of the other player.

Any other Steam users experiencing this? I had thought that perhaps the Christmas period was causing steam servers to become overloaded, but the Steam AOM community is not that big, and these are 2v2 games.