It is not cheating; it is auto-distribution and yes, sometimes your opponent can get lucky with getting picks in smaller bonuses. You can also get lucky with picks, meaning some games your opponent will get bigger bonuses.
Once you unlock manual distribution templates, you can decide where you start from.
https://www.warzone.com/wiki/Manual_DistributionYou can't cheat unless, you make a custom scenario and give yourself an always winning condition. Templates like Small Earth Auto-distribution and even small earth manual distribution are more or less lottery, as games are mostly decided after picks.
Get the games from
https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer/PastGames and one can see if you had better picks in any of the games.