Need Help With Colonial Expansion

[Phanixis]

I am playing Britain. I colonized most of the east coast of North America right up to Manhattan and have Vassalized the Cherokee. Castille has claimed Manhattan up through Newfoundland. I want to take Castille's colonies but I can't, because Castille is allied with Portugal and Austria, which are both powerhouses. I have tried several approaches to taking Manhattan but none seem to work.

With allies, I am able to quickly occupy all of Castille's colonies, but my allies, in this case France, Aragon and Milan, just get stomped by Castille and its allies, plummeting my warscore even if I take no casaulties and suffer no occupations. The other option is just to keep my allies out of it because they fight like shit, and bait Castille into a defensive war were I win most of the battles. This might work if the computer wasn't so trolly. Should their ships merely pass any of my coastal territories, they get a big warscore , even if I sink a considerable number of them with no loses in return, and being outnumbered three to one I can't keep ships out of my sea zones at all times. So even with the ability to take Manhattan with minimal loses and no ally incompetence, I still lose the bloody war.

Is there any way I can take Manhattan under these circumstances?

 

[LightsShadows]

My advice would be to find which of the three has the biggest navy (it's more than likely Portugal or Castille). Then, position your fleet so that you can catch their trade fleets the moment you DoW (if you're lucky, Portugal and Castille will both be protecting trade in Sevilla, and you can get them both at once). Oh, and don't use your allies. It sounds like they'll just drag you down. From there, blockade their main fleets to trap them in port (Castille you can probably get if you just blockade the Straits of Gibraltar). With their fleets out of the way, you just need to trash their colonial holdings to up your war score (I'm guessing that Castille's New World holdings are full cities and not just colonies. If they are colonies, just steal them). It sounds like landing on mainland Europe really isn't an option. So blockades and occupying colonies sound like your only way of increasing war score, which should be fine. If you drive up their war exhaustion enough, rebels might be able to do what you can't and break their mainland holdings. From there, victory should be relatively easy.

To summarize, just hit as much of their fleets as you can at the very beginning of the war and ignore mainland Europe in favor of trashing their holdings abroad.