Hints:

Excellent strategy Choco-Bob I play very similarly. I also think upgrading your Dojo and Archery with special abilities also helps a great deal (Zen Accurary etc). Also round up a few horses - they provide 2 very useful purposes-:

1. Peasants can use them as pack-horses thus allowing you to carry more water/rice back to your Huts. The quicker you have your resources
the quicker you get your army.

2. Put your prized units on mounts and their attack rating goes up. Also you now have the trample ability which I have found very handy in melee situations.

I also love Archers. As Choco-Bob advises use CTRL-1 (Or whatever) to group your Archers then make them stand their ground. An enemy no matter what their Unit type quickly crumbles under a hail of 10 or more arrows. I use CTRL-2 to also group my Melee units and also use their special powers in battle (Intimidate, Shield).

And yes - always save before a big battle. I also concentrate on the towers first, then Enemy Archers, then Enemy Melee then structures. Weather the initial storm of the Enenmy attacking you then sit back and build. It sometimes takes finesse but that's half the fun!

Try the following:

1. Build more peasant huts. The more you have, the faster they spawn, the faster your army grows, etc. More huts also increases your
resource capacity (as does building a Town Hall),
so that your gatherers can be constantly building
up a fat rice/water bankroll, so you'll always have resources when you need them (like when you need heroes, NOW).

2. Use battle gear. Both offensive and defensive. Even on your geisha. Equip everybody and use it in combat.

3. In single-player, save early and often. Make Ctrl-S (quick save) and Ctrl-L (quick load) your friends. I always quicksave before I invade a base. I wasn't in the habit of doing this in Starcraft or AoE and it cost me a lot of time.

4. When invading, focus on towers first, then peasant huts, then barracks (training buildings). Rush your melee guys up to the towers, and keep your ranged guys AWAY from them. Towers have awesome range, but the unit atop the tower can't fire at units attacking its base (i.e., there are no AoEII-style "murder holes"). Tower charges (their battle gear, of sorts) are a bitch, too. When attacking a tower, send one or two units in
first, in the hopes that your opponent (or the AI) will trigger the tower charge, then send the rest of your squad against it.

5. Fire! Fire! Fire! Burn stuff. Dragon Warriors' flaming sword, Serpent raiders' torches, Wolf Pitch Slingers' pitch, and Lotus horse Infernal Breath (among others) all have the ability to ignite structures. Use it. There's nothing more confusing to your opponent (or the AI in single-player) than to have some fire units run around their town igniting every structure they see.

6. Use hot keys. B to activate batttle gear, S to stop, N to stand ground, G to guard, O for non-agressive. Go into Options/Controls and study the whole list. This also includes creating groups and assigning them hotkeys as well.