Yes, meaningfully so. In a smaller market like Battle Ground, a modest local SEO effort, 50 reviews, a clean GBP, and a few service pages, can get you into the Map Pack because competition is thinner. Vancouver is a 205,000-person city with established HVAC companies that have been building their digital presence for years. You need more: more reviews, more consistent review velocity, neighborhood-specific content rather than generic service pages, local links and citations beyond the basic directories, and a website that actually converts mobile traffic.
The upside is that Vancouver's market is large enough that even a top-3 Map Pack position in two or three neighborhoods generates substantial call volume. The investment is higher than a small-town local SEO campaign, but so is the return. A single busy season of HVAC calls from local SEO in Vancouver WA typically returns the annual investment several times over.