Some people have good luck, some have bad luck. Some simply attack the wrong targets and attribute it to bad luck. And lots exaggerate the difficulty so they can chime in with the whining.

Got all my honors to get past those ranks by hitting lvl2-3 npcs 4 times a day with 32 heroes. Probably a bunch of 1s too, I never checked really. Just looked for the smallest city graphic on the world map. I sent them out when I woke up, on my lunch break, when I got home from work and just before bed if I wasn't too hammered. Averaged about one medal per day. The final medal for general, the last honor medal I'd ever need, I was impatient and even demoted my mayors to go out on raids. Funnily enough the very first attack got the medal. The next day I won one on the wheel, how insulting.

It was only difficult/inconvenient because I refused to spawn such low level NPCs near my city cluster. They would be useless within a month. So march times were fairly long.