Are there cheaters on Steam? As in actual hacks

Basically like the the topic says, I just finished playing a game (well it desynced) against a player who I swear was somehow cheating even though I dont think cheats were enabled. The game wasn't recorded which I suspect was intentional, but it was a land based arena map 4v4. The Player in question managed a 9 minute feudal age, followed by an 15 minute castle age, followed up with a full fledged attack against against another walled in player with a dozen knights and at least 10 of those exploding guys from the castle. The knights were also upgraded with both castle age armor upgrades and 1 weapon upgrade along with bloodlines (he was Spanish). The attack didn't finish off that flank arena player because he had a castle up and more internal walls and houses blocking but he kept on pressing the attack. What really got me though was that not only was he able to press the attack, but he was also able to make a 31 minute imperial age while having upgraded his troops and maintaining a steady production of knights.

I'm a long term player but never dedicated myself to perfecting the timing, but I know that outside of really pro player, that kind of macro economizing requires probably near perfect play and this was on a full land map with no fishing and the player in question was only 1800 on steam. After the game desynced I checked the population graph and noticed something super weird. Even though this was a full land arena 4v4, that player somehow had a huge population boom in dark age, somehow doubling his population instantly. The population graph for all the players showed his overall population spiking really early in the game, he basically doubled his share of the population somehow before he transitioned to feudal almost instantly. Literally every other player had nearly equivalent population but his somehow doubled. Theoretically he could do it with multiple docks and barracks but as I mentioned, this map had no water, and building militia would only have dramatically slowed his castle time since this was an Arena map

So was this guy a cheater or was I playing against the Viper's smurf account?