the higher your rating and the higher rated players you start playing, the more the game will go to the end-game. Everyone at that point knows the civs, knows how to play, and does not die 20 or 40 minutes in the game.
First of all this game is very little about resources later on except gold. You're right that gold is valuable, but not valuable as not to exist anymore. Having full pala army is easy to get even in games like arabia.
The point I made was pop. You have limited pop and every army unit takes up one pop. You'd rather want 100 paladins, than 100 berserks, because paladins are 1 on 1 better than berserks.
If you have 100 pop and you have 50 berserks and 50 pikes and I have 100 palas. I will win. yes palas cost more resources, but a good player knows how to balance resources and always will have the gold and food for paladins.
The reason why people don't get wheelbarrow early booming is because getting wheelbarrow early means getting a later castle age uptime. And a later castle age = later tc's, later tc's = later vils, later vils = later imp time. That's all been mathematically confirmed and you get wheelbarrow and handcart as soon as possible when you are capable of doing so without keeping your other town centers idle. The booming build is so standard that in general you get wheelbarrow at around 40-45 pop and handcart +-60 with good play. Which means you will have both upgrades before 25 minutes in-game time.
Another point I forgot to mention is switching to berserks and infantry is also costly. Most if not all games as vikings you go archers and xbows as flank or knights as pocket. So you get upgrades for archer and xbows and upgrades for knights during the early and middlegame. This means you will spend extra resources on getting all useful technologies for infantry for the endgame. Which costs time and resources. Someone who was making scouts into knights and then goes paladins has been more efficient. This gives back more compensation for the viking's early advantage.
And if you want to talk about credentials such as ratings. I guess my lack of understanding means I shouldn't be 2.2k+ on HD or 1700+ on voobly. I guess playing against and with people like hearttt, cz_lierey, poz_edie, error_cz, janik, fengshin (vg_paladin), vilese, Garyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy (or how I call him GAREEEEEYYYYY) etc. (in short they are all between 1.8k and 2k rated voobly players). I just see it from a different more expert play perspective that's all. And I understand that I can be wrong but fuck me I don't need to know I'm wrong when I know that pro players don't like the vikings civ.