General Battuta posted:

Ditch the infantry and all that poo poo, don't worry about crits. Focus on teching up infrastructure systems like bureaucracy (to track food/population/labor and reduce corruption), ideology (to maintain loyalty over widely dispersed populations) and hygiene (to reduce attrition and unlock surgery). The goal is to rush for control of the market and gain control of all the factors necessary for the opponent's build to work. Engineering is great for keeping aqueducts and the like running but you should be sure it's secondary to good economics (and then you'll get a nice spiraling takeoff).

It's weak to rushes in the short term but your win rate will go way up and I guarantee it'll change the whole meta.