So I read that Venice is a pretty popular choice. I don't really understand though how we are supposed to play with Venice the right way? Any tips? Basically what I know about Venice is that it's all about gold and the Merchant. Build Venice on a shore, get all those sea trade routes and become the richest nation, I guess? Then we use the money to buy city states using the merchant. My first playthrough as Venice was pretty terrible, though. I found out I built the city connected to water which doesn't connect to the outside water (Hopefully you can understand what I mean). So all the trade routes are just stuck inside this small portion of water. There are also no civs close to me so land routes are bad as well. I ended giving up as Venice.
That would be cool. I am not really sure how the logistics of it would work or how to go about getting it set up, but I can imagine that my use of the marine would be helpful.