I've already moved far away from going for the standard steel/aluminum start. There are definitely alternatives that work counter to the current metagame, at least in large FFA's.

Look at water: it's worthless early on, but as people start producing fuel, oxygen and food it can skyrocket. It can also serve as fuel or power, with right technology. It makes water much more interesting resource. Both when it's scarce and plentiful on map.

Steel and Aluminium are backbone of a standard strategy, because they are the most basic resources needed in order to expand. The way around this is by starting producing pricer goods to offset the need of buying Steel and Aluminium off the market. I guess this is especially good approach on Iron and Aluminium rich maps as everyone sell the excess goods, driving down their price.

I am going to check the viability of such shift in approach and report back here in a day or two.

Well, for a while I was going early power production since the price of power generally rose for the first part of the game with everyone going steel + aluminum instead of power. Founding on silicon was useful since you could get both high ground and good deposits, with little location competition. This doesn't seem quite as reliable now since wind turbines were increased 20%, so it doesn't take as many players building power buildings to keep the prices low. Prior, you could build a solar panel at level 1 to contain debt, then build a 2nd once you get additional claims either upgrading or from the blackmarket, for the adjadency bonus, using the profits to buy steel. Now, I tend to scout a little more at the beginning to see what everyone is building, but I tend to go for aluminum adjacent to the colony. Good for early mining, and then you can scrap them to put them to better use midgame, and finally start mining aluminum late game for electronics or to sell to offworld spammers.

This works because you alot of expansive players like going dual iron, 3 steel at the start, which really keeps the prices going. Also, you can manage your steel costs by managing your building choices. You can get by to colony level 3 for roughly 350-400 steel even being generous, with little intention

Lately, I've been targeting dry-ice locations, preferably with resources to found on, either silicon (for solar panels) or Alum to upgrade quicker. Going robotic with 2x dry ice provides a very nice transition into glass/electronics. Assuming 3 claims go to 2xdry ice + 1 power, youll be able to hit colony 2 with no problem where you'll want to grab silicon and make glass.  Situational, but very strong. It's trickier if theres no dry ice, but you can go 2x fuel --> 2x glass with scientific and sacrifice a bit in the early game for a stronger mid-game, although thats 240 steel minimum. Getting an alum mine is helpful, but I'll found on it opposed to mine from far away as you get a stuck alum claim when prices fall as they usually do. As with any of these, you really want to see what the players are going for to look for the shortages exploits.

With expansive its easier to skip steel entirely since it only uses half as much and you get extra claims (costs more steel) but at the same time you can produce other resources to offset the higher steel costs.

All of these plays assumes sticking at colony size 3 until steel is cheap on the market. If steel appears underproduced, I'll jump into its production. Also, it makes patent lab/engineering difficult and ignores geothermals.