My latest playthrough: Qara Qoyunlu (horde) -> Persia (muslim) -> westernized.
Some big mistakes that I made and some lessons:
0. Break Russia ASAP.
0'. Break the Ottomans. Not as important as breaking Russia. This can wait until the 1700s, plenty of the time (can release Syria & Mamluks).
1. If you're fighting a big war with a major country, especially a lucky on, if their manpower isn't going down after 2-3 years and they have a better general, back out of the war ASAP and prepare the next one better
2. Unless you've beaten Muscovy/Russia early, do not stay as a Horde later than 1550; Russia has incredible generals, tons of good troops, infinite manpower and especially important, major Western lucky nation allies; you need to be way bigger to win those wars; or play on speed 1-2 and micro for long amounts of times across a huge empire.
My luck was that I had a "get out of horde" button in forming Persian. I only did it mid 1700s and it was definitely not optimal from a conquest perspective - I should have done it around 1550.
3. If you want to form Persia do not forget Kohistan - it's not a Persian core. I didn't know that I needed it and that delayed my formation of Persia by 50 years at least.
4. Find somewhere a minor Western nation, preferably alone, without allies and not in an area of conflict (Savoy = bad
), and get it as a permanent vassal for the Western Arms Trade bonus.
4. Don't enter the Spice Islands unless you feel you're super strong after 1600. All the European powers will get missions for the Spice Island and they will hate you. I had to sell 1 Spice Island province to each of them to get them back as allies.
5. Get to China before the Xi cores expire. Chinese provinces are damn expensive to core.
6. Get "tunnels" to your areas of interest before they get cut off. In my game at one point all my neighbors except 2 (Uzbek and Oirat Horde) were allies of the Ottomans and I could not attack anyone. I even turned down a succession war over the Timurids because of the Ottomans.
7. Do not vassalize Crimea (I'm my case I got a "lucky" PU with them) unless Russia is broken or significantly weaker.
8. You will need Religious ideas or Defender of the Faith to actually have decent religious unity. Mine was down to about 60% because I did not have Religious ideas and I forgot about Defender of the Faith until 1700 (plus as a horde I didn't really want +tech cost
).
So here it is:
Influence map:
Religious map (I'm quite proud of it):
Political map:
Ottoman c**kblock that almost prevented me from getting to Siberia (Nogai was a vassal):
My Western borders have shifted quite a few provinces East because of wars lost to Russia & Castille
Castille won this game: PUd Russia, PUd Portugal (integrated 2-3 years before the end of the game), PUd Denmark. All the Americas, half of Europe, half of Africa + all of Asia that is not mine are their protectorates. Sind is one of the few independent Asian countries. Castile actually saved me by PUing Russia since I was getting destroyed by their alliance and by Russia's drive for Asia.
I would try again to stay as a horde all game, possibly with the Timurids, if I manage to break Russia. If I do that, you will see a glorious red blob over all of Eurasia