It's a difficult and complex game that is mature/declining and most people around have been here for a while. It's never been too unusual to take 15-20 ages to become competitive at the top, because the game basically reached maturity around 35 ages in.

People don't become chess grandmasters in 6 months, so I wouldn't expect them to become utopia pros in 6 months either. There's just no buffer between skill levels, so finding an equal match has become increasingly harder when the "top" comprises 2 or 3 kingdoms, next tier is like 3-4, and so on... you inevitably become mixed