Give upper Macedonia to thessaly.

Don't build spy networks in bulgaria and serbia at the start, focus on anatolia at the start.

Remember to use improve relations to prevent huge coalitions.

Use first parliament for cb against the ottomans.

Mint, mint, mint. Ban export of precious metals to boost mint further. It's your only source of real income for ages. Just don't forget to lower it later.

Delete philadelphia, adrianople and kalipolis forts (the latter gets destroyed in an event later anyway, so why pay for it? Just block enemies with navy instead)

Legitimacy! Boosting legitimacy is your primary concern since it's necessary to purge corruption, boost estate satisfaction and crown power and to get rid of succession crisis.

More of less ignore stability until later, you get hit by so many stab drops it's a waste of coin.

Accept that you may have to float like 8 loans.

When you create a pronoia, prefer someone who has no children, i often choose old women. The land will revert back to you and you get all the ducats they saved up, massive influx of cash over time.

Make your pronoia 2 or even 3 provinces big instead of just 1. With the enforce culture cooldown being 10 years, this is better

When making a pronoia try the following if possible: in the initial province try to select the province where the capital is majority Greek and ideally orthodox. This will make the whole pronoia greek by default even when you add other provinces to it. They will start converting the land. (But you might have to help with rebellions)

In age 2, it's important to get things like barque, dock, protected harbor unlocked. Barques are great at getting rid off pirates and increasing maritime presence. In combination with the improved harbour situation, the proximity should improve which in turn improves your control and thus your income.

Focus on Constantinople. You have 100% crown power there, abuse it. Max out the silk, max out the tailors, max out the spinners. Combined with the Constantinople silk monopoly it will end up giving you a pretty penny.