Don't worry, sir. That's completely fine. I wasn't new to 4x and even played Endless Legend (previous game from Amplitude) and still got spanked by easy AI in like first 3 playthroughs. Thing is game is really really BIG. A lot of people don't even realize how big it is and that it takes time to find out and learn a lot of mechanics and nuances. Even now more than 700 hours into the game i still haven't played all the factions and still discovering better strategies, tactics, resource allocation and such. Game is fairly easy to learn, but hard to master (that was basically devs' aim and that's what i like so much about it). So just take your time to learn more about the game and how things work and u'll get there.