Campaign/Historical Battles pretty difficult?

I picked this game up a couple weeks ago (played aoe3 a decent amount as a kid but never really played this) and am enjoying it so far.

I am able to beat moderate AIs pretty handily and can stand my own in multiplayer games with friends who are better than me.

But my experience playing campaign/historical battles on moderate difficulty has been really frustrating. Are these missions set up to be extremely difficult if you don't read a guide or fail a couple times? Tempted to bump the difficulty down and just enjoy the story of them