I have never won Age of Empires :P ?

So, when I was about 12 I was always playing Age of Empires on the pc, and I really sucked at it, I always had to use cheats to be able to win. Now (age 19) I decided to try it again, thinking I would be better at it now that I actually knew what all the english terminology meant and having played more games, but I still couldn't win. I tried only two times, but it both went the same way; One of the (cpu) enemies had only been focussing on creating creatures meant for fighting and he attacks me from all sides, leaving me with not much more that about 20 creatures meant for fights who all got killed easily. I had to call the Big Daddy in again, realising I'm still as bad as I was before :P