What is the deal with campaign difficulty?

If I play on Standard it's boring as fuck because the AI just sits there and lets me kill them. On Moderate, I can beat the first level or two, but beyond that I'm screwed because they can just boom away and have god-level micro.

Notable levels that have stumped me so far:

• El Cid 2. The two (supposedly warring) AIs immediately start spamming xbows, cavaliers, and rams at me, and I can't even get a decent eco going because all the gold and stone is out in the middle of nowhere, and any attempt to exploit either gets assaulted. If I do make into the city, it turns into a horrible nightmare because they can keep spamming unit, and there's one absolute whore of a castle sitting behind a chokepoint that prevents me from getting more than one or two rams at a time to it, or from defending said rams. And of course I'm locked to Castle Age.

• Montezuma 3. The hints suggest rushing Red, but it doesn't work, they immediately have a shit ton of archers, eagles, and monks waiting for you. Then blue starts coming at you with OP as fuck Spanish bombards. And of course the only gold deposit near your base is tiny.

• Saladin 2. Fuck this god-forsaken level.

• Genghis Khan 3. Yellow gets that wonder up before I really have the firepower needed to assault his base, plus Red keeps sneaking past my defenses and slaughtering my eco.

Haven't really messed much with the Forgotten, AK, or Rajas campaigns because I've heard they're all stupid hard.

Really hoping DE has more nuanced difficulty options. I need something between "boring" and "miserable multi-hour slog".