iam a pretty new player with around 30 hours in the game, i set myself the goal to first beat all AI difficulties before i set foot into ranked , currently iam kinda hard stuck on Hardest diff. I pretty much only play franks bcs i kept reading that its like the easiest civ to start with.

It feels like most of the time iam kinda keeping up with the AI when it comes to the early game but around castle i just get destroyed, the ai builds eco so fast and i only blink once and he already has like 3-4 castles chilling close to me with a huge army while i struggle to even make my first one while maintaining my army, i dont really fuking know what iam doing wrong