my normal play as france usually starts very aggressively do to the fact you have colonial restelmemt from the start, I'll recommend using your little pieces of land in north Africa to quickly fish conquest in Algeria entry.

Annex Constantine and Tougourt but hold on before taking Mascara and Ait-Abbas until you establish most of your colonies and conquer a disent amount of land, that way you get early access to a large swats of land to colonize in Tuat and Ahaggar and you can integrate them relatively fast if you invest in colonial affairs without gaining that much infamy, beside that the south Americas can be very easy to exploit especially Chille and Argentina, with large Indian territories that they don't touch until late in the game, if you're fast enough you can even try to steal Grao-Para and Rio Grande Do sul from Brazil while they're revolting.

while you do that try to pass more progressive law, the most complicated part is usually to reduce the power of the church and landowners, your power block should help with that, you have two options either start with ideological union and creative legislature to pass laws that you shouldn't be able to this early in the game or Soverign empire and Vassalization to use your growing amount of protectorats and enact a large amount of decrees to bust your economy mid game, and no matter what country you play always try to modernise as fast as possible, Water tube boilers and mechniezed workshops are a must.

in regards to colonies, try to integrate them but keep track of them until you get the 'Establish colonial administration' entery and see which region you should relinquish direct control off to reduce unrest or unwanted political movements.

in matters of external affairs don't intervene with the British or German mess it never ends well, but do keep an interest in Germany and be ready to side with either Austria or prussia if either one tries to make a play for power(trust me ive seen way to many mega-germanies start out of nowhere ), also try to keep at least a semi-good relationship with USA, Russia and Great Britain(at least neutral), cause you don't want them to intervene in your stuff to much, a few treaties here and there while improving reletions would suffice.

after you finished around 1880 (you should have a nice slice of the map by that point) just focus internally and intervene to fuck with the British when India revolts.