How do i get imperial faster if i lose control easily

Hey. Firstly i'd like to say that the dark age wasn't the cleanest, however it was much cleaner than your opponents, so keep working on it.

Your chain of events that started the bad streak was once your enemy got inside to your base. Don't panic. Make necessary walling to delay enough. Wait untill you get to castle, once in Castle MAKE SURE you have enough units to clean the army efficiently. Now you made scouts for no real reason (the only reason for that would be if you actually went for scouts and had few left, made scouts while upping, upgraded +2 and light cav when in castle and then cleaned the xbow) Actually this will be good lesson for the site too, so i will use it as one piece of a lesson. You wasted too many knights for no real reason, when you needed to wait for 4-6 knights and make good efficient trade, and then you could already look for some aggression, even with siege possibly. Now this kind of also let him able to mass up, and get the map control in the first place.

Once he had the hill and this is usually good idea most of the time when you need to get map control back - go heavy castle army, make sure you have enough to clear him and ONLY then go for it. Basically with your army you would've needed just 1-2 mangonels and it would've been a good clean up, but instead you wasted alot of knights, even on two occasions. So don't be affraid to mass alot of army, get the necessary unit with it, then go for the clean up. It is especially important against civs that are going xbow - arbalest because they will reach imperial pretty fast, and if they manage to keep the crossbowman alive - dealing with the early imperial will be very, very rough if you are still in castle age.

Let me know if you got any other questions,
Jupe