For a game that has, what, fifteen or so "tutorials", you'd think one of them could have mentioned "oh yeah, if you cross the 25 infamy level, the Great Powers will gang up on you".

Have to say, the way you can just improve the Powers' opinion of you to a point where they'll never declare war on you (unless you reach 25 infamy) does make things rather easy - as long as your goals aren't ambitious enough to actually require fighting those wars, that is of course. Conquering the world with the Ottoman Empire would be very daunting indeed. The game does do a fairly good job of being true to history, except perhaps with Africa - you can just colonize nearly all of Africa without any troops there, except perhaps a tiny army to speed up your colonization? Really?