My friend and I don't exist for each other on the multiplayer servers

I was trying to play a game with my friend today but we couldn't find each other. If one of us hosted a game, the other wouldn't be able to see it. The games we saw on the multiplayer games browser were also different. I created a clan which he could request to join, but his application never came through on my end. When I invited his account to the clan (through the username search thing), the game told me that he had already requested to join, but I still couldn't see the request. It was like the game knew his account existed but we couldn't interact with each other. At the moment the only way for us to play together is to play the original aoe3, which is really disappointing because we were looking forward to the definitive edition.

I live in Canada and he lives in Australia, but I don't think that should be a problem since you can choose which server you want to host the game from. The only other thing I can think of is that I own it on the Microsoft store (downloaded it from games pass) and he bought it on steam. Is this a thing? I know Microsoft store - steam crossplay is a thing in aoe1de, but I can't any information on aoe3de. Any help is really appreciated thank you.