EA Arco - uncle moneybags

[ano]

Ferrosol
You'll probably be surprised but I managed to overexpand W9S9 TC played by a good player with... guess what? Peltasts and a PoD. It was vanilla game with Indies 5. Without a PoD you can still expand with peltasts very well and rapidly research Alt with Philosophers so that your dormant god is able to go killing the turn he awakes. It is perfectly doable especially if you consider that you'll have a lot of money for mercs because philosophers are so cheap.
So peltasts + mercs is the answer. The trick is that peltast is an absolutely decent unit against EA indies who are basically a lot weaker than in MA. You will lose them and have to replenish your ranks but it IS doable. Just leave really heavy provinces for your pretender and do some testing before each attack.
I think I failed only once or twice against indies with peltasts in that game at all and it was against barbarians (should've tested better)

And once you have enough resources, you may switch to chariot archers that have a good second form just in case.