I deliberately dragged it out to let my three generals (Sophia, Berthier, Dumouriez) do most of the farming, and I dealt with one enemy at a time before turning the next neutral power hostile. The amusing thing is guessing what colour they turn. Some neutrals or friendlies turn red if you are blue; blue if you are red. Others turn green. I'm still trying to work out the pattern here, although I've noticed that in my experience, RED Britain always turns GREEN, possibly so she won't be on the same side as France, which is BLUE.

I also had to let them rest in major cities for a few turns here and there to recover their health. They're still not at the point where they can engage in sustained slogging matches with multiple strong enemy units.

You should have seen what Spain was like; by the time I got there, just about every third hex was a small fort. That took a while to reduce. But by the time it was over, everybody's rank and nobility had gone up a level.