How do you deal with Castle age Franks with a crossbow civ?

1500+ player here. This is something that always happens to me when playing as an archer civ vs a cavalry civ - Franks are not the only one, but they're the most common, and the smoothest to play.

What always ends up happening is that after an even-ish feudal age we get to castle at at most the same time, because you can't really match the food economy of Franks going scouts+walls. And when we reach castle age, I never have enough crossbows to comfortably move out into the map, since the meta nowadays is to go only one range at first - if I do two ranges, my castle time will be delayed even more. And crossbows caught out in the open can be very easily killed by knights unless you have a good mass.

So what happens is that I have to do monks and ballistics to feel like I have a chance, while Franks are massing knights and booming at the same time. And by the time I feel like I can try to engage, they already have a forward siege plus 20+ knights, and it's all downhill from there.

So what can I do? I can try to be very aggressive in feudal in the hopes of delaying castle age for both of us so that I can have more numbers, but there's no guarantee of getting through walls, and the other player can always do skirms. I can go extreme stone wall defense and 1 TC fast imp, but that seems risky at best. And if I just sit back and boom, I will die to the knights+siege. What are my options?