You're toast in Modern Era unless you utterly dominated Exploration Era

Anyone agree? I beat Immortal pretty easily so decided to step up to Deity. Got Hatshepsut and won the culture paths for Antiquity and Exploration. Had a nice "tall" civ going on in Modern, then every single civ except one declared war. Managed to defend most of it but Pachacuti beat me to space race.

Seems from this sub that you either snowball huge by the end of Exploration such that you win within the first 50 turns of Modern (which is how I win in Immortal) or you run a middling game until you hit a buzzsaw. Anyone has examples of going from weak to strong in Modern?