Impossible to learn and hopelessly rigged against beginning players – Twilight Struggle Review

I am having to delete this from my Ipad because I am about ready to break it with a hammer. I have played many board and strategy games and this one has a steep learning curve and suffers from one difficulty level so you'll find yourself losing over and over and over and over again and not learning anything which is the real frustration. No matter which side I play the other computer controlled side thrashes me. Can any starting player ever win this game against the AI? I have played at least 15 times now and no matter how well you play, the AI will do some last minute maneuver, gain much influence in some region ("dominate" a region because it only controls one "battleground" country in Asia like this could be Thailand in Asia and that somehow connotes domination which is not very intuitive or realistic) and then play a scoring card to get several points. The AI is clearly cheating in some fashion. A lower level AI might help one to learn some more about the game. As it stands now, after devoting 10 hours or so, I feel like I've just spun my wheels and gotten no where. By way of comparison, Victory Games "Cold War" was more enjoyable to play than this ever was. Maybe play against someone else? Or maybe have a tutorial or something that explains the game a little better.
Review by Radlman on Twilight Struggle.