Underdog strategy

I started playing early December and immediately fell in love with Chinese, loved all the options, the overwhelming choice of so many strategies, the fast building, the officers.
but decided to learn all the Civilization and achieve masteries. Found I also enjoyed Abbasid, played a few matches as Chinese with more wins than losses but with all the players suddenly changing their tune about Chinese, saying they are OP just one month after calling them useless until imperial, and now calling Abbasid useless, I’d like to prove them all wrong and make Abbasid “OP” going to work on perfect build order to counter Mongolian towers and Chinese fire spears. Any one interested in helping? I’d love to see others’ thoughts.