I did it as a horde, finished 1496. With only provinces in the british region it would take maybe 10 years longer and some adjustments for national ideas. I took 6-6-6 ruler, 25 years old for 2 traits -> conqueror (-5 years of separatism) and just (-2 unrest). 0-0-0 consort and heir with bad traits to save some points (disinherited him after war with Mamluks).
I choose +20% morale and -20% core creation cost as traditions, +40% colonial range as first national idea. Would swap core creation and colonial range in the new setup so you can take provinces from Portugal. Second national idea already doesn't matter that much, take something where you'e bad at (e.g. if you're bad with money take reduced interest per annum, if you're bad at fighting wars take another military idea, or take unrest reduction if you hate rebels). Third and later ideas don't matter at all, do not waste any points here
Shortest route is:
- attack England, take provinces from Portugal
- attack North Africans and work your way towards Mamluks
- hit Mamluks with mil tech 4 advantage (easy because of razing and god ruler), take provinces so that you border some arabian minors
- work your way through Arabia towards India (either land route or via Hormuz)
- somewhere around this point you should be able to take admin tech 5 and get the first two exploration ideas, third shortly after (since you're not paying dip points in peace deals as a horde)
- set up a colony next to an OPM in Brazil, conquer the OPM and abandon colony (coring is faster). After coring explore more and set up a colony next to the Mesoamericans, conquer enough provinces to have a port on the pacific coast
- conquer necessary provinces and some more stuff in India until you border a tributary of Ming
- with mil tech 7 and some artillery to barrage forts attack a Ming tributary. You should've gotten some tributaries yourself by this point (I had around 50, all acquired peacefully), bonus manpower from them and tribes estate should help you win this war without too much trouble. I had 60 regiments at this time, mostly cavalry since I took the increased cavalry ratio age ability, also some merc infantry and artillery for sieges
- after this was done I got mil access from Korea, shipped my troops there and declared no-CB on Uesugi (they had replaced Ashikaga)
About San Francisco and New York: you only need colonies in those provinces, not a finished core. You can safely take native coexistence policy to prevent uprisings. First three exploration ideas, dip tech 7 and your own +40% colonial range tradition means you can directly send colonists there if you follow the previous steps, no need to finish a single colony, so no need for settler increase
As second idea group I took Humanist, but it also didn't really matter. I spent a lot of mil power on harsh treatment because I'm lazy, otherwise you might use those points to take Defensive as second idea group and get another +15% morale over Ming
Religion is up to you, I took catholic for reduced interest per annum and manpower recovery papal interactions (haven't bought CoC yet, else I might've tried new Islam stuff)
