There's no actual victory condition, your goals are relative to your starting nation. don't get sucked into interest hell make sure you keep the books balanced, you can turn off forts, lower maintenance and dock ships to lower costs. Build an army to cap, surmise your neighbors, find out who their enemies are make friends with them, play around with different map modes.
the tech up points you acrue are also spent on transforming conquered land to be more comparable religion/culture ect, you need a reason to go to war which is fabricated after you build a sufficient level spy network through your diplomats. france is a decent starter country iirc.