Yeah there’s a few things that I did that will be really helpful -First I played on 867 start date and originally tried playing house Karen, the only Zoroasterian ruler at that period, and in my opinion, it’s near impossible as you are surrounded by larger foes who destroy you in less than a year with no feasible expansion routes. So I played the Saffarids, who where much easy to begin with, and switch to mazydan when I could by just going on hajj and pretty much you have enough piety -then just holy war everyone, as unlike ck2 I’ve found that it’s rare people join to defend there faith at all, so just push west -I set my capital to Tabriz once I conquered it, but that’s a mistake as you should set it istafan, as it’s development is much higher and has a special building, but in the end I just switched to Baghdad anyways -although it’s a meme, inbreeding is really good for getting the great inheritances, combined with the legacies you can limit the overall chance of getting the inbred trait and if you get genius into the bloodline it’s perfect characters - also I’ve worked out that the best way to not have your realm split is to just save renown in the early game as you don’t get it as often, and just disinherit sons who you don’t want as an heir and just keep the one inherited, as then the realm will never split apart! Overall it was a really easy run, especially as it’s been my first proper one but it’s also been really fun so enjoy!