My first game will be Portugal, spending the first 100 years learning how trade, the market sytem and buildings work. Then I will start colonizing slow, with madeira. As I explore further South I will build slave stations in Africa and begin shipping them to Madeira to work in the sugar fields. I will make that one island supply all of Europe with sugar and build my entire economy off of it. I will have a complete monopoly over the sugar trade.
Then I will use that money to colonize Brazil, where I will get even more monopolies on goods, I'll try to get the Pope to agree to grant me all of South America in the treaty of Tordesillas.

My next game, having learned all the mechanics of the game, will be as Holland. In this game I will forego the New World and instead aim to dominate the spice trade, rounding Africa (establishing the Cape as a Boer colony), and then building trade stations in Indonesia. I will wait until the Hindus and the Muslims there begin fighting amongst themselves and use that to expand into their land, eventually claiming it all for the VoC, and from there the silk trade of Japan awaits, perhaps some Japanese may be enslaved and brought back to Europe, for pop growth.

Then I will play England. I will release Acquitaine as a subject and set up a condominium with France there, eschewing the Hundreds years war in favor of building up my textile industry. I will use that money to fund colonization of the Americas, and then in the late game I will seek to dominate the Indian trade, expanding all the way from Ceylon to the Punjab, and use that money to colonize from the Cape to Cairo by the end of the game. British industry will be more than the entire world combined.

>but anon, isn't that just the same style of game every time?
Yes it is.
>dont you want to play kanem bornu, mali, ottomans, china, aztecs, persia, the inca, or khmer?
No, no I do not.