Build Orders

So I'm a long time aoe2 player (I started playing in like, 2003) but never really cared about "getting good" at the game. Then I watched hidden cup 3 a year ago and started getting into trying to learn properly before dropping the game. HC4 is coming around so I'm picking it up again. I know most of the terms used so you don't have to spell out what a drush fc is for example.

Now that my backstory is out of the way, I need help. I tried to look into build orders for the game to just drill, but google is just forever useless to me (I think I just suck at using search engines..) and I'm unable to find actual build orders of varying types, especially ones that would change based on what civ I'm playing or even facing. What doesn't help is I just can't figure out what civ suits me best to 'main' and learn inside and out first. Multiplayer terrifies me and if I was to go into multiplayer, I'd like to actually know what I'm doing first, I don't really want to show up on T90's LEL videos.

So uh.. where do I look? And please don't suggest art of war, because as useful as it is, I personally don't find it particularly useful because of how much variance there is in the game, be it player behaviour, civ quirks or map generation.

Edit: Also being Australian makes me worry a lot about playing online, due to the guaranteed lag if I'm not playing with other Aussies. Does matchmaking have preferred servers or something?

Edit 2: I also can't seem to get the small trees mod to download/update.. it's just forever downloading..