France

[erebrus]

Playing with France, the key seems to be more or less the same as with GB or UP: Colonialism. That is the answer. With it you get such an economic infrastructure that conquering Europe is super trivial. The main difference regarding GB and UP is that you have to pay more attention to the continent, especially in the beginning when Savoy (and some other minor nation) starts to annoy you.
No need to hurry in completing the Lousiana Mission. This is the last goal of this initial part of the game.First, destroy pirate bases and try to occupy as many trade slots as you can (if you temporarily block them with sloops while waiting for the merchant boat is up to your "house rules").
Killing off the pirates has the following benefits:
a) They stop annoying you on the trade theatres and trade routes
b) You get a couple more plantations
c) You get more colonies in America that you can use to recruit armies to conquer the mainland.

At this point, you should take your time to raise a decent army while developing your industries and colonies and researching bayonets (crucial!!)

Now you can address the mission. After succeeding at it, you will have great economic power. Taking advantage of having the additional recruitment bases, I like starting by the cherokee. I like it because I rather not leave my New France colonies unprotected. Once Cherokee have met their demise, Iroquois are next.
Meanwhile you should try to avoid war with GB or UP, because the possible pitfall of this plan is if they raid your trade routes. Having said that, you should naturally build up your navy not to run that risk.

The indian lands, plus lousiana plus the caribean colonies give a nice boost to your economy. Once you have a high income and a good navy, money will be flowing and its up to you to choose what to do. If you do go to war with UP or GB (which is highly likely) try to be the one taking the initiative so you don't get caught off guard. In any case, when war starts, the priority should be to take out their navy immediately so that they can't compromise your income.

The 1.2 version introduced a lot of changes which make France more challenging (in VH/VH). Given the AI aggressiveness, you can easily be pulled into a multi-front war on the first turns of the game. To make matters worse, the new economic model makes it harder to field multiple armies. To build the economy, you have to keep your military at the lowest level you can manage, so you must try to avoid most wars in the early game. You definitely want to avoid war with UP and especially GB. The reason is that like in my original post, your economy will depend on trade (which after the patch is even more important given the tax cut). Now, it happens that you have multiple nations that will want to go to war with you: Savoy, Wutemberg, Iriquois, Inuit and sooner or later Austria and UP. The solution for this issue is simple: protectorates.

Wutemberg and Rhineland should become your protectorates. These will give you a buffer against central europe, and will prevent the former from attacking you. Of course one could easily conquer Wutemberg, but then you would be much closer to Austria. Savoy is to be invaded asap, and then you should get a trade agreement with genoa and keep them your friends for the first half of the game. This way you have Genoa, Spain (both in Italy and in Flanders), Wutemberg and Rhineland as buffers against UP and Central European Nations.

In North America, to deal with Inuit, if needed, just post a sloop in the landbridge with newfoundland. When you have time/free armies, you can wipe them out, but that may not be so so soon. Your main threat however are the Iriquois. Here is where protectorates come into play again, give Upper Canada (very poor region) to Lousiana (your protectorate) and let them worry about the Iriquois. Besides, it will either be conquered by the Iriquois (and you can take it right back), or Lousiana will keep it and give it back to you when you complete the mission. This will not prevent war with the Iriquois but it will buy you quite some time, enough for you to settle down in europe and research the techs you need for natives (bayonets, cannister).

I said you should try to avoid war with UP, but soon you won't have much choice. First it will get into war with Spain. Here is your first difficult decision. I dropped my alliance at this stage, because I had forgotten about french guyana. As soon as you start developing this colony, the dutch will attack you. So build up your strength there (dont forget to bring some units from martinique and recruit a general) and take it from them. Given the agressiveness of the UI, it is likely that UP conquer Flanders. This is where you can turn a risk into an opportunity. Dutch forces will be weak after the conquest, you should have you french army ready to take it from them and from there, you can likely jump directly to Netherlands and conquer it (and spend 20 turns fighting rebellions until it settles down).

Except for these measures, the game plays out as before,you become a super colonial power, get a strong economic base, build a navy to control trade, and dominate the game as you please. However, I cannot stress this enough be careful with you trade routes!! Pirates also seem more aggressive and they were blocking me with 2 full stack (mostly galeons). At a time I had pirates raiding/blocking my ports in america, the brittish blocking my atlantic port and the austrians blocking my Mediterranean ports, cutting my 18k profit to 2-3k.