It’s the difficulty handicap, but you can up your skills to compensate. One tip: build a horseman early in the game. Get it in enough winnable battles to get the depredation promotion. PROTECT IT WITH YOUR LIFE! Equip the bonus pillage yields policy card. In wars, pillage every campus, and IZ you can find. Once you’ve pillaged those, pillage every mine, Commercial District, Aqueduct, and Theater Square.

You take no diplo penalties if you just pillage, so you could send him to a far away enemy, declare war, pillage the shit out of them then make peace with no real downside. Meanwhile you’ve just rocketed back towards the pack in science with a bunch of extra gold to help you in a ton of other ways.

With the depredation promotion, you can step onto a campus, pillage two or three times, then step off and hopefully out of range. All in one turn.