Majapahit

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So i decided to play as this country since they got new ideas instead of the generic ones.
Anywho I rushed for early colonization and ended up having level 3 in dip while Brunei had like 7
Any who, got my buns kicked in a war by them, lost some provinces had to cede the western hindu country not a big deal was able to ally and marriage them right off the back.
Anyway, the peace is up and Brunei declared war upon me again.

Only this time... they left their troops, on my land, and didn't disband them.
So now the AI is trying to siege my provinces with exiled troops.
However I'm still prolly gonna loose since I can't really blockade them with my meager navy so I guess i'm playing the waiting game now :p

[Surimi]

I did a successful Majapahit -> Malaya game recently, so here's the strategy I used. It relies on moving quite fast and being really aggressive in the first few years of the game, as you will fall behind in the short term due to the poor quality of your starting queen and her heir. You just have to hope that long term good heirs and Hindu seclusion events make up for it.

Day 1, start fabricating claims on Sunda and Luwu, and build up your army. Attack Sunda as soon as the claim is fabricated and vassalize them. Immediately declare war on Luwu. They're an OPM so you should be able to match their navies and invade. For some reason, you won't be able to core their province yet, so start converting it while fabricating claims on Makassar and the northernmost province of Kutai (the one bordering Brunei) and build more transport ships as Kutai will have a fleet. Also, raise local autonomy on any provinces you conquer, this means you won't have to worry so much about rebels.

Attack Kutai as soon as you have a claim. Take the province you claimed (this is important, as it gives you a direct border with Brunei) and vassalize them. Coring the province should let you core Palopo (Luwu's capital), but it doesn't matter because you should attack Makassar anyway. Makassar has very high base tax, so it might take a while to convert. Just raise autonomy and leave it going, as it's the last thing you're going to be able to convert for a while. You could even release it as an animist vassal if the situation gets really bad.

At this point, fabricate a claim on one of Brunei's provinces and attack them. They may attack you first, so build up your army to your forcelimit and try to get a useful military advisor (morale or discipline is ideal, but you can't afford more than a level 1 advisor at this point). You should still be able to beat Brunei. It's up to you whether you take provinces from them and vassalize them or just vassalize them. The latter means you don't have to worry about Muslim provinces, the former weakens them and makes them cheaper to annex later.

At this point, you can conquer Buton and Sulu at leisure and start annexing your vassals as there's very little else to do until you have a colonist. However, you should be the most powerful state in Malaya already.

Always use your heir as a general, as he's a terrible ruler and if he dies it will actually help you a lot.

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I have most of that already done.
But somehow Brunei got ahead of me, and right now i'm in the situation I mentioned above. They have roughly 2/3 of their forcelimits exiled in my country and for some reason won't disband them, so i'm contemplating if I should land on their shores with my troops or just blockade the fight out, so far their 50% blockaded and gaining .08 war exhaustion a month.

[-=Maure=-]

I'm currently playing Majapahit, I rushed colonization and locked all of south africa and the indian ocean islands to prevent european colonization on my turf.

Spain managed to get Cape before I could though, but it's ok, I just took it from them in a war and used it to westernize, though they retook while I was westernizing and broke, I'm gonna have to take it back later when I catch up in tech.

If you let any of your potential rivals get ahead of you in navy you did something horribly wrong in the beginning and you should probably just restart, having an unbeatable navy is the key to dominance in the early game, you don't even need an army except for a handful to protect colonies from natives and to vassalize sunda early on. Then you just forget about everyone else and focus on colonization and everytime someone declares war on you you just blockade them and get money/Power projection from them or vassalize them and annex later at your leisure, though then you'll probably have to build an actual army and take colonization more slowly.

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Well I managed to white peace Brunei so that's good, right now i'm just going to keep my army small, my navy large and my colonies growing.
Right after I deal with my loans I took out to build a navy.
And the rebels trying to over throw my 5/5/5 ruler who has low legitmacy (was my heir during war with Brunei)

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Well the rebels won, but I got a god-like exploerer and proceeded to beat Brunei in a war got some land and made most of their provinces rebel.
On the downside the noble rebels won and I lost my 5/5/5 and got a 3/0/2