Looking for tips from the pros

[Edi]

Nothing that I could see. You just started from a position that is too wide open for Mictlan, because you need a lot of infra for expansion (temples for dominion spread etc) and your troop quality aside from sacreds sucks.

You should also play with independents set on 7, that will slow down the AI a bit more so that you can expand without needing to worry about an immediate AI rush. Another problem with the AI is that it uses huge hordes of independents instead of its own national troops. That problem can be mitigated with the Better Independents mod linked in my sig.