New player here, bought the game but some questions.

Hi

I started my gaming with Rise of Nations and I played it a lot. Didn't play any of the age of empires series back then. RoN was the only RTS game I played that time.

Fast forward to today, I finally bought AoE 2 DE after seeing how much popular it has become. So I played some tutorial, liked it bur not to the extent of RoN. And I think I know why.

RoN used to have start of the game from the very early era and the end game was modern era or digital era if I remember correctly.

Where as AoE 2 starts from dark age and finishes at castle age (I'm assuming castle age is the last age from the info I got after playing Tutorial).

1. If I were to play PvP with my friends, starting era being dark age,how long the matches last?

2. Are there any mods which adds more era/ages to the base game? Assuming castle age is the last age in base game.

3. Ranked matches: Apparently most players in ranked games follow some tailor made build order. Doesn't this makes game predictable? If I were to play rank matches with my own build order( which being no where as efficient as those guys following one) , are there any chances of me winning at all? Because I don't want to follow same routine every matches and expect to have variety.

Please correct me if I'm wrong , I'm just sharing this on 1hr of Tutorial I played.

Thanks