Theory crafting - designing a civ without handcart and/or wheelbarrow

Handcart and wheelbarrow are 2 eco techs which every civ has. How can a civ which lacks one or even both of them be designed so they can be balanced?

One way would be to buff some of their non-villager resource gathering, such as trade carts/cogs, relics, and market prices. But all of these have already been done by other civs.

Another way would to just let them have shit eco but have very strong late-game military units, so they'll just rely on their team to sling them resources to steamroll the opponents. Balancing them with 1v1 in mind will be very difficult though.