Yes, I agree that ratios generally matter. Ratios generally matter for a man if he falls in the middle of bell curve of quality. Eliot Rodger and the incel type are going to do poorly in any city, even a city with favorable ratios. For men under 40, there are no U.S. cities with favorable cities. Even within cities with bad ratios, there can be pockets of favorable ratios. For instance, if you are college age going to a 60% female college with in a city with excess single males, that's an advantage. That's not a guarantee of success because the college women can date outside the university male population.
From ages 25-39, the general city ratios are going to matter. Some cities are worse than the others. I'll go through a few well known examples below.
Midland-Odessa, Texas: For those not familiar, Midland and Odessa are two cities in West Texas separated by about 15 miles. Each city has a population ~125,000. West Texas is known as the Permian Basin, and there's a lot of oil and gas exploration out there. Due to the oil and gas nature of the area, there is a huge surplus of males. A lot are blue collar oil/gas workers. Some are in good physical shape from manual labor. Many of them have messy lives. Some are single dads, alcoholics, etc. A childless guy with limited baggage could differentiate there, but since the area is overwhelmingly male, even a well put together guy is going to have a difficult time standing out. Almost every unattached woman in Midland-Odessa is a princess because there are just so many guys out there. The thirst is real.
San Jose, California: San Jose and the Silicon Valley are overwhelming male as well. There are a lot of Chinese and Indian tech workers there. China and India have been dumping some of their excess males upon the United States via H1-B visas. The average Chinese and Indian tech worker isn't going to be appealing to the average white or Hispanic woman in the area. A lot of the white men in the area as aspie/incel/technie/nerdy as well. A guy with adequate social skills has the potential to do ok there, but a lot of women get burnt out from dealing with the tech worker guys constantly bombarding her on apps, or even doing spam approaches in person. It can be difficult to stand out there.
San Diego, California: Numerous military bases/stations are located near San Diego, making it a sausage fest. A lot of the military guys are in good shape. Women in San Diego get a ton of attention as a result. Once again, it is difficult to stand out. It might even be worse than San Jose/Bay Area because the competition in San Diego has more social skills as compared to the tech aspies up north.
I’m in the 30-35 age range too and I do not entertain women in that same age group. Simply undatable group of women.
I'm 37. It would seem natural and logical for me to be dating in that age range. It's not easy to date that group of women. You'll have to sift through a lot of garbage, and I don't want to get too off topic with that. Related to ratios, realized that 30-35 age group women still have a ratio advantage and will have more options that men in their 30s. Because the ratios are still in their favor, these women tend to overinflate their own value, because they often have HUGE app queues on Bumble and Hinge. If they only look in real life, they might have more reasonable assessments of their value, but even still they would have a solid number of options.