I'm really getting my hat handed to me, any tips?

[City Builder]

Hi,

Although I predominantly bought Crossworlds for the map editor, I'm attempting to play it more than I played Legends or Armored Princess however I'm really getting my hat handed to me in the battles.

I'm buying new troops at every place that seems to offer up newer and better troops however when I get into the battle things just go really poorly.

I don't know what I am doing wrong in this, it really shouldn't be this difficult for me and though I'm no power game I've been gaming fairly sucessfully for the past 19 or more years.

Maybe there is a tip sheet floating around somewhere that can help me with my battles?

I tried just letting the auto resolve function run to watch how the AI fights the battles, sometimes it wins, sometimes not, it seems maybe the AI when fighting my battles must get some better roles of the dice than I do in battle if the game uses that mechanism to fight the battles at all.