Help with moderate bot

I've played this game lots as a kid but I'm trying to look into strats recently as I'm beginning to play again.

I keep getting F U C K E D by the moderate bot.

I don't know what to do, I can kinda fast castle and get some knights going but every time I get anything going, the bot has either a 30 boat Armada, or a 70 unit army of skirmishers and archers and I just get steamrolled.

The bot has nearly double the resources collected, and like 10x the army size. How the fuck is it getting everything so efficiently? What am I not understanding