I agree about long rifelmen. What I did was focus Nathaniel Green's army south and kept him in the carolinas, so that he was my "buffer" against Spain and the cherokee early on, then I spammed line infantry and a few rifleman and focused North/East. I upgraded my dockyard early on so that I could bring out some second rates (two second rates with a few frigates and I didn't worry about the Brit Navy at all), by doing that, I was able to keep the Brits from blockading Boston/New York (which they seemed to LOVE to do). Having played unsuccessfuly once before, I knew the Brits are your biggest worry, so i immediately went North/East, and took out the Canadian Provinces within a few turns of each other. The problem was that Fighting the British meant declaring war on the Iriquois as well, so I had to start moving to take them out as well (they were my 2nd major conquest). Apparently knocking out the British's main provinces knocked out their money because they never garrisoned any more troops in their northern and eastern most provinces, so just a few colonial infantry and they were easy pickings.

The Spanish and the Cherokee had a spat, so the Cherokee took Florida, and I immediately captured Florida from the Cherokee (so I could keep my trading rights with Spain, love it!). What I used as my "indian" attacking army is a party of 3 howitzers and the rest long rifleman (the only gunpowder units that do well against bowmen). howitzers with explosive shell and long rifleman and they rout like crazy.

So its 1800 already, I own every territory east of the Mississippi (including the northern Canada ones), and probably going to continue East to conquer from "sea to shining sea"

Then maybe move against the Caribbean (but for hecks sake, I might decide to land a raiding party in the UK!)