There is no best civilization in this game. Each civ has their own pros and cons.

British:
Mostly a booming civ. Their houses (manors) spawn villagers when built. However, the
process of gathering wood for them (wood has the slowest resource gather rate of all)
and building the house itself takes a lot of villager seconds. Also, their manors cost more
than other civ's houses. This makes them a bit slow in early game. Their biggest
strengths would be a very strong infantry in early-mid game with good booming
potential. Their endgame is kind of weak as they lack powerful units such as the French
Imperial Gendarme.

Dutch
They are unique in the way that their villagers cost coin, they can make banks which
generate coins and their 50 vill cap. They are very slow early game because banks take a
while to pay off their costs. However they are strong in mid-game and endgame as they
can have 150 pop armies. Their strength lies in their ease of use of artillery since they
always have lots of gold. They also have nice mercenaries. Their light cavalary - Ryuters
takes only 1 pop, so they can have a huge mass of those. Ryuters+HorseGun/Falconet
makes a great combination in midgame. In Asian Dynasties, towards the end game, they
can use saloon for ronnins which gives them a strong melee unit.

French
My personal favourite in the game. Their villagers have resistance to ranged attack
compared to other civs' villagers who are resistant to melee. Their villagers also have
higher attack. This can be really helpful at times. Consider an ottoman player attacking
you with abus guns. Abus guns do 40 damage as base, with .4 multiplier vs villagers.
Villagers further have 40% resist. Now, abus end up doing just 9.6 damage as opposed to
40. With upgrade at market, your french vills have 243 HP. That is a lot of tanking! You
can exploit this fact by having a vill or two in front of your army to tank enemy
damage :).

Aside from this, French have great military cards and improvements. They have one of
the best economies in the game. Their unique unit- Curraisser or Gendarme is one of the
most powerful units in late game. And with proper cards, French have instant
cavalary ! :) How cool is that?

German
A top raiding civ. A skilled player can destroy his enemies in 1v1 in what is called
"Doppel-Ulhan" trap. The trap mainly consists of letting your enemy enter your town.
You try to get his army between your town center and doppels. This way he has to hit and
run the doppels and enter your town. There your ulhans along with minutemen and TC
fire finish the entire army off.

German also has a very interesting ulhan spam in early game which they can accomplish
by sending 700gold as the first card in colonial age. Midgame, their war wagons are
pretty powerful.

Spanish
The civ totally based on shipments. Their shipments arrive faster than others which
makes the technology "Merchantalism" one of their most powerful weapons. The extra
shipment or two that they get from it can be used to mass a lot of army rather early with
a fast fortress+merchantalism combi. Other than that, their unique unit- Lancers are
especially good vs Infantry and make them a good mid-game force. In 2v2's and 3v3's,
they can send their first age card which allows pikes and xbows to be created faster for a
hard rush in early game.

Ottoman
One of the easier civs for a total newbie to play. It's an easy civ to play, but pretty tricky
to master. Their villagers are created automatically, this helps newbies who otherwise
forget to train them. However, their villagers are created painfully slow which gives them
a pretty bad economy. To make up for this, they rely on trading posts. NEVER PLAY
OTTOMANS ON A MAP WITH NO TRADE ROUTES.

They have a strong early game and are one of the hardest rushers with Janissaries. Their
Abus Guns are infantry-eaters. In Age3, they have access to Spahis and Mamelukes.
These two are very powerful mercenaries. Spahis have a great area of effect attack and
can regenerate their health. Mamelukes have insane hit points and a 40% ranged attack
resist. 5 mamelukes can eat up a huge age2 army. Later on, their great bombards are the
best siege weapons in the game.

Portuguese
Another of the boomy civs. They are pretty weak early game and rely on their extra town
center to keep them alive. However, as the game enters midgame stage, their extra Town
Centers have allowed for extra villagers->better economy. Their extra TCs also give them
a good map control.

They have a powerful fast fortress as their age 3 army cards are pretty nice- Mamelukes,
cassadors, rail guns. They have the strongest dragoons in game with extra range and
upgrades compared to other civs'. (Not considering war wagons here).

Russians
A great civ, whether it be for early all-ins/rushes or booming. They can do powerful early
game rushes and overwhelm the enemy with their numbers. They can also play the boom
game.
1. Their unique tech at Church allows them to upgrade all their units at once at a pretty
cheap cost.
2. Their faster infantry creation card.
Russian player can boom safely having sent the "Infantry trains faster" cards. Line of
sight upgrade at church will help him know if enemy army is coming. When it is, the
Russian can create his army ( which will happen pretty fast) and fight the war. By then
he'd have had a huge economy and technology advantage over the enemy team and
would be in a dominating position.
Most Russian players however mess up in late game by continuing to make infantry. You
should be switching over to cavalry towards the end.

For people who like cavalary, french and german would be the best.

For people who are good with micro, ottomans would be nice.
For people who are slowish on rush and would prefer to sit and turtle/outboom, ports,
british, dutch and even russian are nice.

People good with mapsense and general game sense can go for strategies like spanish FF.
and so on..

If you talk of The Asian Dynasties, then in games other than 1v1- Japanese are clearly
overpowered. With the top economy and infantry in 1.03 TAD patch, their strength in
the game was unparalleled- All they needed was to survive till 6 minutes unattacked.
This was fixed in Fan Patch 1.2 though, with their shrines costing more and their
musketeer upgrade being pushed back.

In FP 1.2 , I'd say British and Sioux are best civs for 1v1. British wins most matchups in
1v1. Sioux on the other hand, wins most matchups REALLY EASILY in 1v1.