My take on this is that in most cases the actual country you are playing is immaterial to your chances of victory. There is an initial expansion phase which leaves one/two leaders, the pack and one/two trailers - how this works out is down to the micro-economics of order of play, luck in card selection and opposing personalities.

The game then typically goes two ways,

a) 75% The leaders will then be nailed by everyone else, the trailers will lag behind and the most likely winners will emerge from the pack.

b) 25% The initial leader establishes a commanding advantage, the rest of players fail to peg him back and the game is effectively over by turn 3-4. [This was how Ewan won the WBC final with Genoa and an early Crusades]

I think it is useful to not follow the crowd in terms of advances - don't be the third person into Exploration; go into Commerce or Civics instead.

You also want to be pulling as many cards as you possibly can to ma-ximise your chance of getting a significant resource, leader, military advantage or misery card. With everyone taking this approach it leads to the game being significantly faster in tempo - Exploration perhaps not getting to the New World,

On the token play I prefer to either be last with a huge number for expansion perhaps with a military advantage or first with enough to buy a card and cash in the commodity set that I stole going last the previous turn...

Anyway, AoR is a very rewarding and intricate game.