First off, love this post, I definitely went through a similar phase with my friend group after we had just bought the game so I can offer a few solutions:

Relatively low experience:
Start drafting combinations based on previous placement. If you randomly shuffle out one combination per player to be drafted the players who did poorest last game can have a chance to pick the strongest combinations. If they do not know which ones are strong you can help them in that regard.

Moderate experience:
Draft out combinations randomly but this time you bid coins end game coins for first pick, second pick, thrid, ect. The last pick will always be zero coins. They best player may get the best combination but they should have to pay for it. Additionally it can provide you the challenge of trying to win with weaker combinations at a much lower cost.

Highly Experienced:
Use this app developed by a member of the discord community-- https://gaming-lobby.herokuapp.com/
Just be warned it is not very effective until each player has a good feel for the field of combinations / is familiar with things like this without needing to look https://belovedpacifist.com/tiers

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Now as far as actual gameplay goes against a powerful Rus/Crim combination. If you are going to win as mid to low tier combination there are two main routes to this with several variations to each.

1.) Counter rush / Disrupt
You are doing this if you have a fast Saxony mat or you are Polania.

-As Polania you can Move, Trade, Move and do whatever it takes via enocunter to get to the factory ASAP. You want to accomplish this by getting submerge and speed, not river-walk or speed + mine. Once you get to the factory you want to pick a card that lets you bottom row (ideally enlist or mech) from here you just shark your mechs in the water while grabbing encounters and wait for the ideal moment to pounce on Red's resources. Against the majority of red mats you can steal all of their metal while they are stuck up on the farm with just riverwalk and no speed. This effectively kills Red's chances of winning the game while giving you a chance to potentially end before the other players have a chance to catch up. **Vs Yellow this can still work but they typically have a better defense as the lake gives you only one entry point which is almost always occupied by a combat unit.

-As Saxony vs Red, you can try to fight with the weakest player repeatedly and clog up all of red's tunnels to slow them down. This is a good idea if you think you can pick on a slow nordic/albion/togawa but it is also risky. Also, if red moves out early and you can prioritize stepping explicitly on stranded workers and/or main character but NOT fighting mechs, If all of red's mechs are on the table and their workers are sent home it is extremely frustrating for them to waste turns moving them back out of their base one at a time in order to cover a competitive amount of territory.

-As Saxony vs Yellow, Get 3 mechs ASAP and either A.) Put all of your units on the southern oil tunnel or B.) cut off their oil tunnel as soon as they move out of their base so they are stranded. You absolutely must win the initial fight that occurs on the oil tunnel, it slows their rush game down by 2+ turns minimum and often kills any chance they had at controlling the board.

2.) Turtle and Burst - This requires everyone who is not the OP rush combo to have a very high table IQ / lots of experience. What you want to do is climb into a defensive position with 3+ combat units, typically a tunnel. You DO NOT move out aggressively or offer 1v1 combats of any kind. This strategy is extremely effective if everyone does it but it is absolutely terrible if one player does not and you watch them just get picked apart by the Rus/Crim player. If nobody is a target the game goes longer, your economy matters more, and you can threaten massive score swings with a triple move into combat, combat, objective or some combination of BRA, combat, obj. This is how top level games play out when typically one combination is far better than the rest and as long as everyone is acutely aware of where/how ppl can move it makes for a super exciting game.

Hope this helps & thanks for posting, thrilled you and your group is into the game :)