Yeah, i've had the French and the Spanish both land big armies on the homeland. Took me a whole day tinkering about till I realized I was thinking 20th+ century 'intercept' warfare ... and switched to 18th century thinking and simply took my fleets to their ports with a few expendable armies, landed, burned&looted everything in my path then got my people out.
after they lose their ports they kinda stop trying to load armies onto their ships.

Been noticing a few more glitches in the game as well with the infantry:
- accuracy of line infantry is very low. troops with triple veteran status all seem to miss hitting a line infantry column in front of them. I'm talking a line of 120 men in double column (rank fire enabled) shooting at an enemy in front of them and they only kill 5 enemy soldiers. Let's consider that again: 120 shots, 5 hits.
-native american bowmen have insane accuracy unlike musket armed troops. At the same range (aka the line infantry is shooting at them), 60 archers will take down about 15 to 22 troops a volley.

- advance & fire order does not work. troops get stuck in a loop between loading musket and keeping formation and advancing. aka 3 line of men, first is about to fire but one man dies. the entire 1st line stops reloading, shifts position to keep a tidy line and then continues to reload. when you have something like a militia unit (that doesnt have rank/advancing fire/platoon fire capability) firing each musket independently at you, you find that your entire foot regiment fires like 1 shot every 2 minutes.
- the AI in battlefield reacts instantly to artillery attack orders. Kinda sucks to click 'fire' and watch them run away before the guns even load. Is my general shouting that loud they can hear him?

on the good side, im in love with bomb ketchs, rockets ships and rocket artillery. I had a galleon attack an indiaman that I had escorted by a bomb ketch ... head- on attack.. the ketch scored a single hit and the galleon blew up. Must've hit their beer storage