I haven't really thought about that question, but it is very fair so I'd be glad to take a hypothetical look at it.
An initial assumption is Premium Account purchased @ 6 month period - $4 per month is reasonable for a game that can easily take a half hour a day or more if I am really enjoying myself, and doing it at the 6 month level nets an additional 30 GC. Premium means my account can really grow without restrictions. Free is viable, but to be honest I don't recall the exact restrictions on game level, population etc for free players. If you want to make a big splash you really need the unlocked potential of premium.
I would elect to build my empire on WG. It is currently the highest population world so there is the most opportunity for interaction with other players while still having plenty of space for carving out my own little empire without stepping on anybody else's toes. The general Empire size I am comfortably managing, because I do like to manage all of my main countries to be as fully functional as my capital rather than just being feeders to it, is 8 countries. So I first search the map for a quieter patch of 8 countries that have few 'access' points to them, basically meaning just limited borders with other countries so limited access to potential aggressors. Looking right now there looks to be a solid looking little area on the west edge of the Canis region on the Virgina Bella continent with available or soon available countries that would fit the bill where with holding 8 countries, only 3 of them would actually share borders with potential opponents (and none currently exist in the area). I would set my capital as the one closest to the coast and away from those action points, so I would choose what is currently 'The Kingdom of Berlitta' as my starting spot.
My first step would be going into the automation settings. Because I don't want the game to do what it wants, I want the game to do what I want when it comes to managing my country. In 'Country Automation' I would have only 'Buy ammunition and supplies for the army', 'Reactivate weapons automatically when war is declared', and 'Automatic placing orders for products that your country needs' checked, since those are basically just maintenance tasks that I can still control where it matters and prevents me from having to manually handle tasks that there's no benefit for me to do. I then go to the 'New Corporations' tab still in automation, and Set Production/Hiring to 100% because I want the consistency and production even if the products I'm making are in surplus. Upgrades are of course checked because both equate to more profitable corporations. Salaries I set to a target of 100. I'm not worried about worker shortages because I control and shape the population, and with the diminishing returns on salary I don't lose much productivity by setting salary to 100 instead of the default 300 (which is 3x the salary cost). It means my corporations have less expenses and the production lost factored in still means they're making more money, which means more money for me. In Buying Supplies, because I'm premium I can set a Time Based strategy when ordering products, starting at -1%, meaning I actually pay a tiny amount over market value. This matters considerably for corporations with supplies that are in extreme shortage (like anything that uses Silver). It ensures that my corps get the products they need consistently and reliably. I set Quality of supplies to 221, since when my corporations are at their max quality upgrade level they will cap their output quality at 220Q supplies. 221 gives me a small buffer since orders are always +/- a couple quality points from your desired.
My next step would be getting my financial house in order so to speak. I would dismantle all starting military units, which if I recall properly are a big financial drain at the start and are set up with default weapons, which is virtually never the most efficient in battle. I would place all of the weapons on the world market to make some money off of them and simultaneously eliminate my maintenance costs on the expensive air force units especially that frankly aren't needed at this point.
I lower Government Salaries to 125. My ultimate target is Game Level 6, which gives you a full 5 point bonus on your Welfare Index, which is described as the general happiness of your population. Welfare Index is a major contributing factor to corporation productivity - even with the 100 salary I can reach productivity levels of 111% or even higher with a solid Welfare Index.
With Welfare Index and long term growth in mind, I then move to adjust my other indexes in line with needs for maximizing Welfare Index (with the exception of Education Index, which needs to be even higher for the country's general needs and growth. I am for an Education Index of 250, which in short means whatever the Statistics tab says I need in Education as far as Schools/High Schools/Universities, I need to actually have 2.5x that. I also need an additional 5 Universities because I convert 5 right away into Back to Work Schools. Education priorities can be shifted as your needs shift and you have too much or not enough of certain employee types, so I would initially set mine to 10/5/6/5/6/5/6/8/13/18/12/25 for a total of 120 (that total is the important part) since I am going to need more teachers than I likely have to start since I'm trying to grow that index so much, along with higher numbers in High Tech professions since the more sought after corporations tend to be heavy on those professions. Health Index I want in the mid 120s, so I aim for 1.29x the number of hospitals the tab says I need, plus 10 that are converted for Disabled Workers. Same situation for Transportation index, where I aim for 1.27x the number of roads/tracks/treatment that the system says I need. The needs the system reports are for 100 index, we need a little higher for our Welfare Index. I also go into Social Security and set it to 80%, which will give me a 102 Social Security Index score.
With those done I head into the Trade screen and head to the Order Strategies and Requested Quality link. The situation for supplies on WG isn't too bad, but 3 months low-water mark might still be a little too low for comfort, so I set it to 6 months, and order quantity of 6 months. This will be adjusted over time as my comfort level allows more stockpiling, but this is a safe point for now that doesn't overspend my limited starting money and the beginner bonus income I get every month, while not endangering my supply level. I also set the Request Quality for all products to 120Q, except for military ammunition, which I go through and manually change on each type of ammunition to 330Q. Consumption on most products is relatively even in terms of overall cost, meaning if I have 300Q Ammunition and my military uses 10 of them in a game month, if I had 150Q Ammunition I would expect the military to use 20 of them in a month, for the same net cost. Many products are like that, but some important ones aren't, so for the sake of ease for now I'm setting everything non-ammunition to 120Q.
With my score targets and supply chain set, I now go into my Corporations to see what I'm working with to start as far as existing state owned and private corporations. My chosen country doesn't have any private corporations, which some people prefer but I don't, because I want to put some extra people back to work so they are making me money instead of costing me social security payments via the Back to Work Schools and Special Clinics that I set earlier. So I hop onto discord and head to the White Giant section and put up a little advertisement asking for a couple of interested CEOs to either build new or transfer in some of their existing corporations, on the promise that I am prioritizing Welfare Index (meaning more productivity for corporations including theirs), and won't raise the tax level beyond 40% - it is currently set at 30% like C3 countries are set at, but it is reasonable for me to take a slightly higher piece of the pie if I'm paying the expenses of higher education/health/etc that enables their corps to be more productive, while also informing them that salary levels in country are set to 100 so they can likely lower theirs and end up making more money as well (since most run around the default 300 salary to avoid worker shortages in C3 countries). Some people are weird and try to restrict the kinds of corps they want a CEO to have in their country, like limiting military corporations, but if it makes money I'm happy.
I set the Profit Sharing for my state corps to 100% because that is my money, not theirs. If they need money I can manually transfer to them, but I can't manually transfer from them so I have to take 100% of their profits up front if I want the money in my country coffers (which I do). If my unemployment is above 15% I'll elect to build a mining corp, but I otherwise won't build anything because I want to have available workers for one of those CEOs to take me up on my offer. I elect not to close any of the corporations that I start with unless they're products in perpetual surplus, because even lesser performers like most agricultural are profitable at max quality/effectivity upgrades, which state corporations start at when you start a new country. I will remove the corps that I don't truly want only after I am more established financially with some of the newer corps that I build eventually are fully matured.
With my expected income and expenses set, I'd start exploring military options to expand at a reasonable pace towards that 8 country goal. I'd visit Discord and do searches for 'WL' and 'War Level' to see some of the discussions surrounding strategies to efficiently tackle C3 wars while my finances are limited. I've already gone into a lot of detail on everything else, so I won't make the deep dive I could on weapon ordering and war fighting, I'll just say that as long as my finances on my initial country are moving in the right direction, I will field the military needed to advance until I've expanded my empire to the full 8 countries, since each of them would go through the same starting steps here to become financially viable on their own. Fielding a serviceable defense for each is easy since I need an average defense index of 85 for Game Level 6, which is the ultimate target for its high Welfare Index bonus.
The beauty of all of this is that with the premium account, there is no GC upkeep cost for this empire as it is my main empire. So as I climb the leaderboards, I'll deny the rewards until I hit rank 1, which is currently worth 80 GC on WG. I wouldn't necessarily do anything with the GC at this time, and once all 8 countries are going I would make the ultimate determination if I wanted to expand to start my own CEO on the same world which would expand my options for private an public corps considerably within my countries, or if I wanted to take a shot on starting an empire on FB, which is the PVP world that has both high opportunity and high risk for substantial gains.
I don't see it as worth the extra cost and thought I'd vent and see if any the vets feel the same hehe