How to deal with empire wars with handicap?

With some friends we are doing a 2v2 tournament in empire wars. Since everyone's level is quite different we put handicap, i.e. the most powerful team must kill 8 villagers at the start. It turns out that I have lost all my games so far, this is my last chance to win 11

What strategy do you recommend?

I am 1250 in RM, my partner is <700. And now my enemies are 800 (always francs) and 900 (always mayas).

Since I am the strongest in the tournament, I always play with handicap, and so far what I do is to attack fast with scouts transition knights. In the last one I tried Bulgarians attacking with 2 m@a before the scouts. In general the <1000 overreact with spearmen to an attack by scouts or KTs, so I was thinkin on playing goths, i dont knoooow D:

I hope to at least show you that this is the best way to play with handicapping that we have found, so in parallel you can tell me how you have dealt with handicapping between players of different levels.

Thanks!