My experience as a player in Express is that doing well requires good fundamentals and adapting to the high turn rate. It's still possible for an all-X country to finish in the top ten.

Molotov's comment about efficiency is interesting. By some measures, this country grabbed very inefficiency: https://www.earthempires.com/express/595/ranks/18. Yet it still finished with 44 M NW because it had good fundamentals, despite the low time investment and the inefficient grabbing.