I just started seriously playing the game as the barbarian side with my thief. i figured since i have an ok idea of how to play i, i put the side as random. Unfortunately the enemy is minotaur. I had a feeling it was going to be tough. I made their difficulty knight to give them some intelligence and they swarmed me. Their units were tough as shit and almost all of them couldnt be touched. Does anyone else find the minotaurs as too overpowered or am i just still new?

I don't think Minotaurs are well known for their sanity ;)
They are a tough race to play against because their base troop is the equivalent of what was the barbarian lvl 3 troop. However the sides have been carefully balanced - I know this because all the exploits from WBC 2 that I have tried have now been smoothed over.
I can't remember how I tend to beat the minotaurs, I think that they are weak against magic, so perhaps try playing as elves (magic based towers). If you select a unit, they you can (right?) click on the stats to then scroll through other info such as what they are resistant to. Also, remember to attack early, with a lot of races if you sit back and defend then the computer will overwhelm you. It can simultaneously control 4 or 5 large parties while managing unit production, you can't. So keep a lid on its production and resources. Build up a squad that early and take down its hero. Then get siege weapons and pummel their base, with a lot of melee and a lot of range to battle the troops they send out at your siege weapons.
I haven't met a race that I can't beat, personally I find dwarves and dark dwarves hardest because they have so many siege weapons.
Also, if you find a race hard, try playing as them. This will highlight their weaknesses.

They don't share our ideology, not even our biology, the only thing that can save both me and you is if the minotaurs love their children too.

Minotaurs are hugely metal dependent, so sneaking around and stealing their metal mines will help cripple them. Beyond that, I'd advise walls and towers, and stock the towers with arcane damage units.
And then pray they don't get drunk and set themselves on fire. When that happens, EVERYTHING DIES.

Oh, and most people that I've seen play minotaurs, usually including the computer, often don't do a very good job of having much in the way of ranged attacks. Flying units are therefore a HUGE pain if you can catch them away from towers.

I'm not sure how new you are so remember that being aggressive in the early stages of a map is critical to success. As someone else pointed out, Minotaurs are quite metal dependent and I think they need a fair amount of stone as well which means that as a Barbarian you share many of the same resource requirements. So you should really be in control of more than half of the stone and metal nodes on the map if you want to keep them from having a big advantage over you. Also note that a tier 1 minotaur warrior costs 100 metal while your tier 1 barbarian only costs 45 so use that to your advantage to harass the other side with your superior numbers. Once you get the Chieftain's Hut built you can start researching the Horde tree and in no time you'll steamroll right over those cows with an unstoppable tide of sweaty screaming barbarian badasses!