Quite early yet, but can't move on bc my save game bugged after forming Russia, so I'll waste some time posting:
My save game got buggy after forming Malaya as Makassar. It let me continue, but the final autosave is 200mb (205,456kb to be exact). It just kept growing everytime it saved, so I lowered to autosave to only once per year (I usually do it bi-yearly).
And here is that Makassar --> Malaya game, the final empire at 1821.
probably the biggest mess of a game I've ever witnessed. The only stable region in the entire world is Malaya. Probably 50 nations have over sea's colonies, or at least did before the revolts, its just hideous.
I could have gotten much, much more, but I wanted to have low infamy and I wanted to finish constructing custom houses in every province, so at some point I stopped expanding to try and reach that goal, but in the end, I did not achieve. Also built temples and level 2 forts in at least 80% of the empire, most other buildings were vastly neglected. No province is owned in the east indies by a foreign sovereign nation.
As you can see, Malaya is the greatest economic power by far. They are also the greatest land and naval power on earth as well. The navy is entirely modernized and although Malaya does not have the largest army, its 6, 20k stacks can instantly annihilate almost any other doomstacks on earth. Nations like Castille and England tremble at Malaya's might.
Malaya is also the most technologically advanced nation on earth. Only Lorraine is even remotely close. And thats mostly because of the ahead of time penalties I'm paying.
Finally, the pride of the Malayan nation. Mostly of Sulawesi culture, the devout Sunni faithful are a highly productive group. Malaya leads the world in Fish, Spice, and Naval Supplies production.
It was a 1399 start, all settings on normal, no cheating except some restarts early in the campaign. Its not easy to survive as Makassar, but once you get a few provinces its just like any other potential maritime power.