This is without abusing cavalry cheese instead using the germans and austrians to fight the french while their ally the english were having a tough time.

I'd say overall larger countries have become a lot stronger now in this patch and you can't 100% ignore society techs anymore due to how the whole local price system works. Which is good but I think quite a few don't know what exactly is happening so can be confusing for some. Also performance is noticeable early then there's a weird slow down around 1900s which then clears up again in the 20-30s