My unimpressive first Ironman finish

Compared to most of the games I see you guys post on here this one is quite unimpressive, but it's the first time I made it alive to 1820 and I wanted to see if anyone had any tips for me other than the ones I (think I) have picked up as a result of this game.

What I learned

*Focus your colonists - It's nice to have land in the Far East and Africa and North and South America, but it also spreads your forces way too thin. I had to keep ferrying armies between China and Borneo to put down revolts in the latter while conquering the little nations that broke off of Ming. Meanwhile I was fighting revolts in Benin and conquering Yao and Morocco. All of this left me woefully unprepared for a Brandenburg/England alliance that took Armor and Finster and an alliance with Spain from me (I just barely got them back before the end of the game). Moral of the story - be really strong in one or two places instead of kind of weak everywhere.

*Colonial nations 'breaking off' are annoying - I looked it up after and apparently they do it when you get four contiguous territories in an area, but only in some areas. It never happened in Indonesia or Malaysia or the Philippines or anywhere in Africa, but after pouring resources into the Caribbean (I lost those in a war I was dragged into with England), Argentina, Northern Australia, and California, they all formed little nations of their own and were much less profitable to me than they would have been. So, moral of the story - only colonize Africa?

*England is difficult to invade - I tried that pretty early on and got my ass handed to me, and they weren't even allied with Brandenburg at the time (it didn't exist yet). They also kept me from taking Burgundy (along with Tuscany). Also, they love sowing discontent, which is always a great help.

I probably won't play as France again for a while. I'm still bitter at England, so maybe I'll try to form Ireland and take it over or play as Denmark and do the Danelaw achievement. Anyway, thanks for any tips you can give!

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