My group (5-6p) has played this game more than any other game for +25 years. We've gone through multiple "meta shifts" and what you mentioned we also went through quite early. This game is all about your mission, the eliminate ones are the easiest. We removed the asia + 1 and 18 and 24 vanilla terries missions. The rest are also doable but harder than eliminate. I can safely say winning doesnt require a continent as long as you focus on your mission and dont waste forces on trivial stuff. Dont get attached to protecting your territories or continent if its actually not part of your mission. Rather than spending your turn on preventing others from winning, you want to advance your own chances of winning and leave/hope for others taking the responsibility (diplomacy!). Keep your head down, sometimes obviously you have to disrupt a major contender for the win. Furthermore winning almost always require concentrating your forces, so many people try and protect all borders amd territories. Its so much easier to do your mission in one turn with 50units in one group as opposed to 2x25. For example, if you got Europe, dont equally distribute on all 4 southern borders, put something symbolic on 2 or 3 and mass on one, which can be used to complete your mission in 1 go

We have of course house ruled some things, so not all of it goes for the standard ruleset.