Evening gang!,
I am quite new to ETW, having been completely satisfied with Rome and Medieval 2 for years I took the plunge and bought ETW. I am loving it so far BUT I have hit a brick wall in my campaign. First of all I am playing as GB as I was informed this should be the easiest nation to start off as. I started off by keeping to myself, upgrading roads, farms etc. The first thing I decided to do was to take care of the pirates of the Caribbean. It wasn't long after that France and Spain decided to declare war (most people said this didn't happen to them for a while but seemed to happen very quickly for me, I hadn't even built up a significant navy at this point!) on me, so in the Americas I took New France all of Frances islands, leaving only Louisiana for them. I started picking off most of Spain's possessions as well working my way through South America.
Now I may have made a mistake in deciding to invade France in Europe, they were annoying me immensely and they had destroyed the Dutch early on (again I was told they would be a reliable ally but they were gone in a few turns. So I took Paris and Flanders from the French and forced them to a peace treaty. Then because of all this expansion a tonne of nations have become hostile, Prussia, Sweden, Savoy are now at war with me in addition to Spain and France. I have thought off countless armies trying to besiege Paris. Sweden annoyingly invaded the Thirteen colonies and took their cities destroying them whilst I was defeating the Iroquois. Then the Cherokee declared war as well!! So I have taken the cities back from the Swedish, I am dealing with the Cherokee whilst being wary of the fact the US spawned early on and if they declare war on me, my position will be very precarious as they're in my back yard while my army I am fighting on the front against the Cherokee.
I have zero allies and everyone close to me looks like they are after my blood and my economy is pretty shot after fighting all these wars so I am having to pick my battles wisely.
Has anyone else had this problem of allies being destroyed early on and being left with a lot of hostile nations? Any tips/advice welcome!