You see, that's crazy. Why are we being attacked by people in ages way above us? I can understand me being in the Iron Age level 22 and being attacked by level 25 classical age, but levels 45 and even worse, medieval age? Why? The system is flawed there. They need to balance it somehow.
There's nothing wrong with the match-making system. It is how games like these were designed. You are already lucky to be capped at +1, equal or -1 Age. At higher Ages, you get to see people coming with cannons and guns, steamrolling through your beautiful base, shooting over your expensive walls.
If you notice, this ain't an RPG. High level simply means they are very hardworking in upgrading their buildings and expanding their nation. You only gain XPs from upgrading and researching stuff. It doesn't make them super-strong. The Age is where it gives them an edge over others but this is just like reality - some nations have nukes, some nations don't.
So what can you do about it? Think about your strategy instead. If you have a lot of resources that you want to safe-guard for the next building upgrade, put your TC and your Forbidden City (if you have one) outside that act like easy targets. TC going down will give you peace treaty. The more you make your base harder to attack, the more resources you lose because like one of the poster said, each person will just come and take small bites from you and overtime, those hurts.
If you don't really care about resources and want a heavily defended base, then sacrifice your road networks and create more compartments with your walls. Secure your defenses behind walls to make them more difficult to be destroyed.
Medals are not something that a low Age should consider because there aren't any incentive to it and having higher medals means you will be matched against higher Age people. That doesn't mean you can't win. I'm at high Medieval Age and I can take down a low-mid Gunpowder Age. What you need to also know is that higher Age nations have larger base and it is more difficult to defend. They also have more resources to loot from. Most of my 200K and 300K gains are taken from them because they are probably saving for those million million upgrades.
The most annoying type of attacks to high Ages are just dropping 1 or 2 foot soldiers at each of their farms and take away 100K of their resources. Then surrender - kthnxbai. They don't get peace treaties. LOL
