tips for 2v1 Brutal and Ruthless? help!

[Azor]

2v1 medium -> took an windmill near enemies and built bullet hives in borders
2v1 hard -> built defensive bullet hives, built an army, starved the enemy
2v1 brutal -> ???: hard strat isn't working, enemy quickly overwhelms bullet hives w/ t3 units or moles or gets a lucky croacker hit. I tried using balloons to kill snakes but these destroy hives too quickly.
2v1 ruthless -> ??? can't get even get past 2v1 brutal yet

[EELuminatus]

Not sure whether I already answered your question on Discord, but here's a strat that should work against both brutal and ruthless CPUs:

• farms + defensive play is a good start
  
• bullet hives are in some cases best accompanied by wire (vs Toads, Lizards, Squirrels) or balloons (vs Moles, Chams, Ferrets, Falcons)
  
• as main units, I prefer a swarm of Falcons + Pigeons: they are perfect against units beelining towards you, and also against Snakes... only if the enemy comes with many Squirrels or a Fox, you should retreat them behind your defenses
  
• you usually need one expansion
  
• try to deal a critical blow to your enemies when they just fully saturated a new expansion or lost a lot of units in a bad attack - starving them without attacking is very hard
  
• if you don't get such opportunities, t3 can give you enough power to push - especially Owls, Badgers and Wolf can help

There are some variables, like terrain, mill layout and the enemy's unit composition, of course, but this strat has a pretty high success rate in my experience.

[Cursed Hawkins]

Playing the turtle tactic works really well, AI isn't exactly the best at preserving their farms as the starting four you have are good for five to six minutes before needing replaced.