So I'm about 200 years into my Danzig->Teuton->Prussia game.

A couple difficulties set me back and was looking for advice.

Difficulties:

• First, though I have all of quality ideas and a 3-5 edge in mil tech over rivals, but I'm struggling to finance any war that lasts longer than a few months, as I essentially have to bankrupt myself to support a force large enough to compete with mass stacks of neighbors.
• Second, I've now recently been entirely surrounded by Poland and Lithuania. I have 12 provinces, a decent strength, a vassal of Anhalt, and an alliance with Denmark-Norway with Sweden vassal, so I'm not getting attacked, but I can't seem to build up enough to break out, even in favorable war scenarios.
• Third, Poland just allied France, I tested a war on a save revert, but even after racking up 15-18 score, I couldn't get them to peace as they had a 5:1 strength advantage over me still... Then France rolls through the HRE with 60k and smirks at me while steamrolling my remaining forces.
• Fourth, a crippling combo of 0-2-1, 0-4-2, then 1-3-2 leaders over the last ~120 years have been likely the nail in my coffin.

I'm pretty confident I could ride the game out to a 40-50 ranked finish by playing extremely passive, but after 150 years of passiveness it's growing a little stale. Looking for some advice on breaking the cycle and breaking out of my rut.

My possible plans:

• I got Anhult to 3 provinces in the HRE by farming them some stuff from their neighbor, they're bringing in about 1.2/month after giving me about 0.25. I was considering subsidizing them and declaring them some decent wars in the HRE where they can get stronger. I can't reach them by land as Poland will not give me mil access so they'd have to fight solo. That's probably not gonna go well, but might be worth a try.
• Do a complete pivot switch on my strategy and go colonial. My diplo is decently high as my shitty rulers have generally been strongest in that area, though not "strong" there. But, It'll be a while to unlocking my next idea set given my appalling admin situation; and given the state of colonizing, it'd feel like a fairly cheap and empty success if successful at all, and would almost certainly entail waiting another 150 in passive mode.
• Try to build up navy and invade a weak and distant neighbor on a coastline. This is probably the best option, unfortunately, I've never been able to pull off a good naval invasion in this game, I must be part Persian or something because I'm just awful at it for some reason.

Things I've considered, that I don't know enough about:

• Building up my court to try to get a decent ally. Denmark is good enough to prevent me from getting wiped, but ain't gonna get me out of my current situation. Maybe if I got a stronger alliance, like say England, though it'd be a stretch, I could handle more capably the Polish/Lithuanian/French threat. HRE is in shambles so I'm gonna go ahead and say my only hopes are Milan, England, and maybe Hungary which recently split off from the Poland Lithuania thing, but is extremely weak comparatively.
• Running literally no military preventative force and praying I don't get invaded while trying to stack up dev.
• ???

Anyway, tall Prussia seems to be a decently popular pick so I'm assuming someone's been in a similar situation and can offer some suggestions. Thanks in advance!