Yes, it does.. I mean I've gotten fairly decent and starting to win games but I still can't beat the computer on easy. Once you start developing strategies though, it starts getting better
And sending the characters out early was a must for me.. just not a huge battle with an enemy early. More like going out and killing creeps to level up your hero. There is also harassing the enemy to, going to their base and taking out their workers. That can help a lot.
Also try and make sure you get a hero as soon as possible.. most of the replays I've seen have got them as the first thing built. If you want you can go to replayers.com and get some replays from the good players. You can develop your own stragegys from them. That's what I did
Another thing is hotkeys. If you have any building selected, or group of units, if you push ctrl + a number, it sets that for the hotkey, so that you can manage anything from anywhere. I'd suggest settings your heros as sperate ones, and then groups of your units that are alike for another one, and then maybe buildings as other ones.
I'd also suggest making sure you set heros as rally points. That way you don't have to always go back to your base to gather units you produce. This way they automatically go where the heros are, so this saves you a bit of time too.