I think the key is to put the tower once you are in feudal. Putting the tower there is a way to stop the knight spam.
The only option is obviously get to the secondary gold, but is usually more exposed.
By the time you can build some horsemen and raid the secondary gold, if you are able to deny that gold is gg.
As abbasid when you are passing to feudal you don’t need to use villagers, so collect 150 wood and then put all villagers to food and a few to gold to spam horsemen and getting slowly resources to pass to castle age.