ORIGINAL: KingHalford
I'm currently playing with Commerce starts. It's actually very strong, because with such a huge boost to the private sector you don't need to bother building any of the QoL buildings and your cities will grow very quickly as a result.
I'm interested to know what kind of planets you've based these results from, because my own experiences suggest that the Profiles you need are highly dependent upon the planet, your starting conditions and the neighbours you have around you.
Actually really all of them. Just keep your leaders happy and in the end all of the profiles, with the correct strategies, will make you win the game. Not saying there are better ones, just that I have won all my games on all difficulties on all planet types before I even started noticing there might be a difference in profiles. Just so much to learn [:D]
EDIT: my recent interests are capability in leaders and these profiles, like I said. But I managed to do well even without paying much ettention to these. The AI just is not that great.