New hints ???????????????

[caravel]

Did pretty much nothing myself for about 60 years except taking Austria, Tyrol and Hungary from the Hungarian (routing armies of jobbagys is not really that hard ...), Ireland and Livonia.

That's the problem with the Hungarians - they tend to train too many of the Slav Warriors, Javelinmen and Jobbagy units. The slavs are too weak and the javelins are overpowered for the player but underpowered for the AI as they do badly in autocalc battles and the AI cannot deploy them properly in human vs AI battles. The same goes for Spanish Jinetes - great for the player but the AI rarely puts them to good use. Slav warriors can be improved with some modding. The best option is to turn them into light spearmen. Javelin types are harder to balance, if not impossible. One option is to cut their ammo down to a minimum and up their charge and morale a few points, with the "uncontrolled" discipline type as another possibility. This turns them into "throw and charge" flanking types.

My influence suffered as a result and since the English were smashing the Spaniards quite easily (why the Spaniards almost never think of building a few barques to have only two provinces to guard is beyond me ...)

The AI cannot manage navies effectively. It moves fleets around the map with no real purpose in mind (totally random). The only real remedy for this is to remove fleets and shipping from the game altogether.