I'm new and only saw only one of those battles, the french outnumbered and outclassed all of our players at du roy. That is not attrition, that's closer to total war. And when you field more players in a battle, you should have better kill rates.
You also seem to be lacking the context of my original comment. It was that constant battles with Brits and US, who wouldn't fight each other and consequently saved each other the cost of resource drain from fights they should have with each other, coupled with the fights against the french recently fortified by pirates who defected can only prevail against our forces. Each player can only craft so much, each player can only gather so much. And when fighting 3 opponents who won't fight each other, those 3 have a distinct resource advantage.