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- Anything between 1366x768 and 1920x1080 is well playable. 1366x768 is already bigger than the "default" resolution of the old game (the middle one of the three resolutions you could choose) which was 1024x768.
- 4k resolutions can be halved by choosing 1920x1080 or a resolution close to it, to hit the exact half resolution of your monitor and keep the image sharp. Well playable.
- 1440p will give you really tiny units to play with, but halving it to 720p will give you a very low vertical resolution. So there is no good "middle ground", 1440p is probably the worst possible hardware for AoE2:HD. It's still playable, but you either need to have really good eyes and not be bothered by the small units, or to accept the low vertical resolution if you switch to 720p.
Switching to 720p will create the additional problem that everything will be very large and pixelated to look at (if your monitor is ~24 inches or bigger), so you'll probably stick to 1440p for aesthetic reasons.
The game is still enjoyable, though. Be sure to use a good mouse with a high DPI resolution, so that your movements are precise. 2500 dpi as a minimum.
Now here's the contradiction: To be able to see the whole screen without effort, you need to move away from the screen; but that makes the pixels even smaller than they already are, and only amplifies the problem of everything being too small. I see only one solution, if you want to avoid fatigue: Pick a reduced resolution, maybe at 16:10. You know, something like 1920x1200. This makes the screen much narrower, and allows you to move 20 centimeters or so closer to the screen. Have your graphic card show BLACK BARS all around the image and don't have it stretched to full screen. That way, you avoid that the image gets too large, and you also avoid that it gets blurry.
I'm basically doing the same thing on my 27" 1080p screen: I go to 1680x1050, which is also 16:10 with black bars around. The distance from the monitor is convenient. I've tried several resolutions, and I'm relaxed with this one set.
All the Pros are fine playing Starcraft 2 on a high level in this zoom. Now if you go up to Full HD in AoE2, this will already be a huge jump. Going even beyond that will give you no measurable gain. I am pretty sure that if someone was to look into this methodically, he would ultimately come to the conclusion that the negative effects of such a huge screen outweight the positives. The larger your resolution is, the farther you have to move your mouse to reach the borders of the screen and start the scrolling. You have to make much heavier mouse movements on a large screen, travelling larger distances on your mouse pad, which will be fatiguing beyond a certain point. Besides the fatigue, it will also be a slowdown: You need to move your mouse farther than other players to reach the screen border and start the scrolling, which means you'll scroll more slowly than them, putting you in a disadvantage. Good players never stay on the same screen for long; they're constantly jumping around.
Another limitation, as I wrote in my previous post, is the viewing angle of the human eye. You can only see so much information without the need to move your head, and if you're constantly moving your head to see the whole screen, this will be super exhausting. It makes 1440p maybe doable on 24 inches, but on 27 it will be pushing the limits. The human eye has difficulties focusing if you move further away from the screen, so that's not a good solution either. Our eyes evolved to work best at 30-40 cm distance, which is the natural distance between eyes and hands.
I know that subjectively it feels good to have a huge screen, at least for the moment. But it will not be a measurable advantage and give you any edge over other players, if you have such a large resolution set.
This has nothing to do with AoE2, so I don't know why you're mentioning it. It was your graphic card that failed to change the resolution to 4K. Personally, I much prefer 16:10 for RTS games, so even if I was going for 1440p, it would be 2304x1440p (16:10) and not the full screen. Call me a perfectionist. 16:9 is ideal for movies, tolerable for most PC programs but sucks for RTS gaming. I'm more comfortable with a 16:10 resolution set.
Perhaps, I tested it on my dad's PC, Intel HD Graphics 530. Can't be bothered to bring my PC with a GTX 1080 over to the TV to test though.