This whole thing started out as an Ottoman Fast Revolution Strategy for island maps like Amazonia or Caribbean. The idea was to boat boom as quickly as possible to the industrial age and then revolt with Santander (Colombia). As the three ironclads provided hammered the enemy into the dust, the boat-based economy would slowly catch up with an enemy who was constantly losing units and buildings to the shore bombardment. Finally, a large army would land and mop up.
Now this works fine against the AI – but then again, just about anything does. It may even help you rack up a victory or two against some inexperienced opponents who might panic once the ironclads let loose relatively early in the game. But it's not really feasible against an opponent who is prepared to fight to take the water back, and his superior economy would certainly allow him to do so.
So I changed the approach a bit. The idea is not to race for a fast revolution, but to create a situation where revolting actually works to your advantage instead of simply not losing you the game.

Santander's Ironclad Fist

Ottoman strategy. Best suited for island maps, but works reasonably well on standard water maps as well.

Necessary Cards:
-Schooners

Recommended Cards:
-2 Galleys
-Advanced Dock
-Improved War Ships
-Admiralty
-Factory
-Robber Barons
-Silk Road

No card other than Schooners is truly vital for this strategy. Everything else can be replaced to some extent. Add what you think you'll need from the list of recommended cards. Take your pick for the remaining slots. I recommend at least some land military cards as you'll hardly be able to get by without those.

Discovery Age

Start out with the usual stuff: Collect crates, build houses as necessary, start herding, scouting and gathering treasures. Build a dock, send Schooners as your first card and start pumping out fishing boats as soon as the shipment arrives.
For age up you have two possibilities: The Quartermaster will provide you with enough wood for 10 fishing boats and is usually my first choice. However, if you expect to be attacked early, the Governor is not to be frowned at either. Take your pick.

Colonial Age

Here's where it starts to get interesting. Your main goal is to take control of the water, both to protect your fishing operations and to harass your opponent from off shore whenever possible.
Therefore, my second card is usually 2 Galleys, which helps me get an early lead in this respect. The galleys are faster than any other ship and more than a match for galleons or canoes if handled properly. They are very effective at scouting the water and at disrupting enemy fishing operations. Don't forget to build another dock – you'll need at least two to keep pumping out fishing boats and warships, and to research the appropriate upgrades.
On an island map you might be able to go without land military for the moment, provided you're sure you can keep the enemy away from your shores. On most maps however it's important not to neglect land warfare too much – as your opponent will be only too quick to demonstrate. You'll definitely need an army, but mainly for defensive purposes. It has to be strong enough to repel any enemy attacks, but there's no need to go to the offense, not yet. Tailor your army to meet your needs: If the enemy is attacking heavily in colonial you'll need more troops to fend him off. If he's going fast fortress you want to follow as quickly as possible. You should turtle on the land while at the same time being as aggressive and dominant as possible on the water.
For age up there are once again two possibilities: The Admiral seems the obvious choice, providing another galley and more wood, but the Marksman with his abus guns is sometimes even better, as you'll often need all the land support you can get.

Fortress Age
By now, most of your villagers should be gathering wood with the fishing boats providing food and gold. Use that wood – you'll need frigates to keep water control. Your goal is to destroy any remaining enemy docks and keep the opponent from building new ones. Don't forget to check his deck! It came as a nasty surprise to me once when four privateers suddenly dropped out of the sky right among my fishing boats... You want to drive the enemy off the water for good now. Build (and/or ship) frigates, and upgrade your navy! You might even want to consider sending some cards like Improved War Ships, Advanced Dock or Admiralty.
Now would also be a good time to grab a trading post or three if you haven't done this already, provided you can control and hold them easily. Your land army will probably be weaker than your opponent's, so don't bite off more than you can chew.
Your main goal is the same as during colonial: Play defensively on land, slowly turtling your way to the next age, while making sure you keep total control of the water.
If possible, try to save up a shipment or two to have them available as soon as you hit industrial (Factory and Robber Barons).
I have no special preferences for age up, it really depends on the situation. Usually I choose the Engineer because a couple of falconets cannot hurt in the land battles to come.

Industrial Age

Here's where it all comes together. In a perfect world (think Patagonia) you should now have fished the ocean basically empty and have four fishing boats on every whale, with the remaining ones safely garrisoned in your docks. Your navy rules the seas uncontested.
You have two factories and some well protected trade posts (maybe even upgraded with Silk Road) available to generate additional resources. Economically you should be in the lead if you pulled off the boat boom right, and as far as land military is concerned you should be trailing not too far behind.

Enter Santander.

With sea control and a somewhat stable position on land, revolt and choose Santander, which will give you three ironclads. Use these and all monitors you can build to hammer away at the enemy's base, and have your land army, now beefed up with a huge number of colonial militia, move in as well. Between the two of them, wipe the enemy off the map.
Ok, it probably won't be as simple as I made it sound. But with factories, boats and trade posts your economy should be strong enough to keep up a reasonable military production, especially compared to an opponent whose economy is taking heavy blows from a massive shore bombardment. Even if the first push is not enough to get you a straight win you'll be in a superior position afterwards, both militarily and economically, which should guarantee victory.

Off course, there's an obvious question about this kind of strategy: Where's the advantage to simply not revolting? Why take the risk?
The point is that the revolution doesn't hurt a boat based economy as much as it hurts a "normal" one which pretty much grinds to a halt. Ironclads plus monitors can hurt the enemy economy badly (much more than monitors alone), keeping you on a somewhat equal footing economically. The colonial militia on the other hand helps evening out the score military wise. The best way to fight someone who controls the sea is to overwhelm him on land, and the militia should help preventing just that.

Having said that, one important point here is to know when to revolt, and when better not to. Don't even think of revolting if you feel you going to win the land war anyway. Revolution will always be a bit of a gamble, so don't risk it if you can win without doing so. No need to limit your options too early, boat booming is a feasible strategy in its own right. Just keep the option in mind.
Definitely don't revolt if you haven't driven your opponent off the sea completely and destroyed his docks. A single, well handled warship can wreak havoc on your fishing boats and is extremely difficult to stop quickly enough to prevent heavy losses. Remember, you can't replace fishing boats after a revolt! (This is why I like to keep some fishing boats safely garrisoned in my docks – even if I destroy all enemy docks he might still be able to ship in some warships to cause trouble.)
Also, don't revolt if your ship's guns cannot reach the enemy base, or at least large parts of it. The strategy is feasible only on maps where the enemy starts out close enough to the shore to be in range of the monitors and ironclads. This depends largely on his starting position and on the way he laid out his base early in the game.
In all these cases "simply" continue to outboom your opponent, slowly transforming your economical advantage into a military one.

One more point: I have found that on my level of play (which is, admittedly, not a very high one) a lot of people, including me, have enormous problems fighting two battles at once (i.e. on land and sea at the same time). For better players this might not be much of an issue, but I have found that using the strategy described here has helped me improve on that, which means that if I can force an opponent of somewhat equal skill into such a situation I have sort of an additional edge as I am more used to it.

Note btw that the dock upgrades for warships (namely Cannonade and Armor Plating) don't affect ironclads as they should. This is a bug ES knows about, so I hope they are going to fix it.

And finally: The easiest map to win on with this kind of strategy is of course Caribbean: With total water control it's easy to secure the treasure island and go for a Trade Monopoly.

Oh, and thanks to everyone I discussed the revolution feature with – here, there and everywhere. You might find some of your ideas in here. Not that I won't take all the credit, but I might need someone to blame for any bad ideas people may point out.