Right, that's why I said you had to take Paris and Loraine (guess I should have said Alsace). Some factions have a single "home" territory. For France, France is the first and Alsace-Loraine is the second. For GB, England is the first, Scotland is the second (and Ireland may be a third, but I've never taken out GB before). Prussia has Brandenburg and East Prussia

Other factions (like UP) have only one home province.

I also prefer to do a little role-playing too in that I try not to do too much stuff that didn't happen in reality. Completely destroying France or Spain is something I try to avoid. As GB, I usually crush their economy by destroying their fleets and then blockading their ports. Then I hunt down their trading post fleets and take them over. I then dismantle their colonies, starting with the islands in the Carribean. With Spain, I usually stop there and leave them New Spain (since they've usually already lost Flordia to the Cherokee), but with France, I have to knock them out of North America to truely secure my colonial assets.