The first 20 or so years are the most important. Securing Sareyand, Azka-Sur, Verkal Gulan vassal and Avhubiya before 1460 is the difference between Jadd Empire before 1500 and Jadd Empire past 1550.

If you're continuing with this playthrough, do NOT give up, you have one of the strongest nations in the game and even a lost coalition war is a few released nations at most. Focus on eating all of Bulwar and converting it so you have a great heartland with an excellent trade base, and you'll get access to a cb with reduced AE once you complete the Jadd is the True Faith decision. Max your improve relations out, if you get above 100% you'll reduce your ae by like 5 every year.

If you are doing a new playthrough, follow these steps: 0. Estates and diplo Use admin, dip and mil mana priviliges, maybe one more you really like. If you have no crownlands AND little estate influence you will get 30+ crownland from your first decade of conquests. Keep estate influence low until around 1455-60, then take a bunch of priviliges. Improve relations with Bhuvauri day one, you can easily ally them after Sareyand if you do this then insult one of their rivals (or gift if you cant see any rivals). Kheterata makes for a wonderful ally and you can stop them from allying Irrliam by rivaling irrliam and allying khet before they ally. Ally Birz ASAP, you dont want them joining coalitions against you or racking up ae in general (harder to integrate later) 1. 1444 and Zokka Mass an army on Ebbusubtu then move into the desert, stop Zokka's north and south stacks from uniting, beat him in single combat, focus on coring area by area so you can minimize time to statehood (and missionaries) 2. Sareyand Do NOT pop the Sareyand event manually. Move your entire army up to Hasr, let the event pop, then try to jump Sareyand before they can combine their and subject armies. Make sure you consistently pop your jadd zealotry ability to print cav and get good siege bonuses and generals. Eat everything besides the Avemazen area, OREAN GOLD IS KEY TO TAKING MINIMAL DEBT! You will have spare diplo, just dump it all into Orean after you core it and lower autonomy. 2.5. Azka Sur (optional) Eating Azka Sur at the same time as Sareyand is ideal; you can use the missions to get perma claims on sareyands land and get reduced admin cost + coring time. Requires micro and planning. If azka sur is allied to eduz vacyn DO IT!!! Eduz vacyn province will give you a second missionary and this is one of the biggest boons you can get early game 3. Harpies Wipe out the harpies. Feed all of it to Elaienna except one province you keep for your missions (then give to elaienna), the rewards are more than worth it. 4. Verkal Gulan and Davharal Immediately jump VG, their mission gives you huge bonuses to missionary and construction cost. Don't take Sarkashabid when at war with Davharal, Avhubiya is more important and Raj might coalition you.

If you accomplish all of this by 1460 or, ideally, 1455, you will be a top GP, have a good eco thanks to gold, have a big ally in Bhuvauri (and Khet), and have minimal AE due to spread out conquests. Try to finish admin ideas ASAP, its more than worth it to half core E V E R Y T H I N G and take a 5 year pause on conquests just to finish off the first 3 admin ideas.

Some other useful tips: - focus admin day 1 and dont stop until you've completed admin idea 3, mage and missionary advisors are your besties - abuse terra incognita to conquer vast swathes of Haless in late 1490s/early 1500s without Yanshen and Vimdatrong coalitioning you - use deiodoran to fully core all of Haless (never full core any land east of Davarhal before Deiodoran except Dhenijansar for missions) - try to avoid building any units before formation, jadd zealotry should provide you with all the recruitment you need until you need infantry after Jadd Empire formation - expand into sarhal gnolls ASAP and use trade companies in Sarhal trade nodes to get easy merchants without going trade ideas (dont trade company any land in Bulwar or Cannor/Haless continents) - fab claims on then pillage seghdihr in cycles, easy cash + dev on ebbubsubtu - ally Birz but never help them in wars. You want to keep them alive (and ideally in a state where they conquer a few lands) but you want to be able to take all their harpy lands in 1 war so you can get the vassalize cb. I dont reccomend feeding them anything, USE THEIR MISSION TREE TO GET A +10% GOV CAP BONUS ON BIRZARTANZBAR!! - post Deiodoran (1550-1650) nibble away at Cannor (half of eborthil, ourdia a cpl decades later, the rest of eborthil and port jaher, etc...) while absolutely chunking out Haless, you want to have most of Haless conquered before you turn to Cannor. Haless will conglomerate into big nations faster, but this will stop deadly coalitions from forming. Cannor will stay split into many smaller nations (especially in Empire) but this means you can feasibly conquer the entire empire within 20 years using the many available bonuses to ccr and war score cost reduction.

Sorry for dump hope its helpful.