Well,
I think that the ladders should be based @ the old Age of Empires 2's one,because is that ladder that makes the game "alive" till nowadays..
We do use a gaming site named voobly.com, and a lobby like this:
We can access everyone's ranks and profiles before playin' them, so you can get high level games, and low level games... its your choice, aaaaand it does have a "clan system", that makes the community stays together and play together with ur friends.
I think that if an 12 years old game has an active ladder, with plenty of clan based tourneys supported by the fans, Relic could do way better with CoH 2.
Sorry about my english, it is not my main language.
Thanks.
Guh.