Almost finishing a game with England/GB (I'm in 1760, ATM).
I handed my continental holdings to France straight away. Conquered Ireland. Allied Scotland, RM and all. As you can see, I like a historical route. At first, the GPs mostly kept to themselves, except for France. They pounded on Burgundy and got into a few stalemates with Austria, but they expanded all over the lowlands. They even got Girona from a formed Spain (with colonies all over the place, nonetheless).
But, after some time, they can't compete. Once Spain and me got our colonial holdings in place, it was a walk in the park. I got Newfoundland in a single war against them, annihilated their entire fleet in two battles. Spain got Girona back, then got Labourd, Toulouse and another province in Aquitaine I can't remember the name. In a war for the Guyane, they sent over a 40k army to doomstack me in India: with full Quality and over 60 army tradition from pounding on indian minors, I managed to win every single battle against them - with a 18k army - eventually wiping them out. Meanwhile, Portugal occupied their entire territory.
What happens is that, while France has a lot of troops, if you plan carefully, you can beat them. If you face them head on, you're bound to lose. If you can obtain naval superiority over them, you're all set to win. If you can't then you must play defensively, wear them out and eventually their manpower blows away. Attrition is doing its job as never before in the EU games. Also, they don't colonize properly if England plays their cards right. Now that colonies fight for themselves, the Thirteen Colonies are a powerhouse; in my game, they managed to win in their side of every single conflict they've been in.
All in all, I have 2 considerations about the problems raised by the OP:
- France does not blob as effectively as it once did. That is because a) they're lousy colonizers and...
Have you asked yourself how much worse would the situation be if France had several great power allies?
This, basically. They can't ally themselves with some other behemoth as often as before (in one of my earlier games, I had to face alliances of France, Austria, Sweden and Russia).
- Alliances, in my opinion, now work as they should. Too often alliances resembled coalitions before the GP alliance malus. Every war was a world war. Now, we have localized conflicts, with specific objectives; for example, in my recent GB game, I just won a war against Spain for Cuba (started by the Thirteen Colonies against New Spain). The fight was concentrated in India and the Caribbean, with major naval battles occuring in the spanish coast. Before that, I had a localized war against France (for some indian provinces) and Russia (also for some indian provinces). I managed to make the spanish relinquish the lands they conquered in China as well.
TL;DR: France is strong in early game, late game, not so much (if the player knows what he's doing). Alliances between GP needed the nerf, because they felt too much like coalitions. To conquer a single province you used to have to fight the whole world for it. I'm quite satisfied with the game, ATM.
EDIT:
Because the AI doesn't join coalitions when it has to.
Not the case in my game. I just checked the game history, the first time France got beaten, it was because they faced a coalition of Castille, Austria and a few HRE minors. Coalitions are not as common anymore, also something to my liking.
