Though these days I kind of hate it, because to play it on any harder difficulty you're basically expected to have the skill level of a speedrunner, otherwise the AI will just zerg you down immediately, you'll panic and lose. Very stressful, but I guess that's why I belong on medium mode.
AoE2 is so hard, I'm normally the best at RTS games, but other games' extreme difficulty is this game's medium mode.