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Gothic Invasion right before I annex Austria

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This is a detailed guide for mid-level players which explains how to pull off some of the more counter-intuitive early game moves for many nations. This screenshot is from my Gothic Invasion run (conquer all Germanic culture provinces as Theodoro without changing culture / tag) which uses the East Frisia -> HRE Start. Nothing here is new and you may well know all of these already, but it does consolidate all the different versions you might be able to find from Googling. Some of these moves may seem a bit cheesey, so be warned, and feel free to add anything I've missed.

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Easy: Byzantium Vassal Start: Recommended for Christian majors (Aragon, Austria, Lithuania, Poland), also useable for non-Christian majors (Crimea, Kazan, Tunis, Mamluks)
This strategy is designed to cripple the Ottomans at game start by vassalizing Byzantium and dragging you and all your allies into a Defensive War.

1. Build to force limit and pray for a good siege general from your rulers. Ally as many large nations as you can and then declare a no-CB war on Byzantium.
2. Byzantium will most likely have Serbia as an ally, sometimes Circassia. What you do next depends on whether you are a land power or a naval power.
3. Land: You want to start by sieging the capital of the ally, then peacing him out for money, before marching straight to Byzantium. You may have to improve relations with Ottos for military access, and this becomes problematic and may require restarts if they refuse to give it to you.
4. Sea: You start by landing in Morea, but make a move on Constantinople quickly before the Ottos siege it.
5. Before you capture Constantinople, check if Ottos have declared on Byzantium yet. If they have not, then move your troops in and out of Constantinople until they do.
6. Move your troops to a safe location preferably in your allies' territory, and then annex Athens while vassalizing Byzantium. This will drag you and all your allies into a war with Ottos. Two good allies like Austria / Venice / Hungary / France / Muscovy / Mamluks can very easily destroy Ottos.
7. At the end of the war, return cores to Byzantium, and also grant them Athens as a province since it's their core. You can now play the rest of the game having destroyed the Ottomans and picked up a great and loyal vassal.

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Easy: Bohemia PU Start: Recommended for Christian HRE majors (Austria, Bavaria), also useable for non-HRE Christian majors (Denmark, Castille, Aragon)
This strategy uses the fact that Bohemia starts as an interregnum, which historically occured when the Habsburg King Albert of Hungary, Bohemia, and Austria died while his son was still unborn in the middle of the Catholic-Hussite upheaval in Bohemia. The Hussite nobles refused to accept his unborn son as King, and elected one of their own from the z Podebrady family.

1. If you are not in the HRE, restart until Bohemia rivals Austria.
2. Do NOT engage in any of the estate mechanics which lower your prestige. You are going to need all the prestige you can get. In fact, you may want to declare war on a weak rival, or anyone around you weak enough to beat up just for prestige. Forcing them to End Rivalry nets you a healthy amount of prestige.
3. Improve relations and royal marry Bohemia as soon as you can. Then wait until your dynasty comes to the throne. You have a very short window before the event kicks in and a z Podebrady noble is elected to the throne. In that window, you must Claim Throne and declare war on Bohemia.
4. This may not be an easy war, but remember that your goal is to capture Prague so aim for that above everything else. Once successful, you now have the second most powerful country in the HRE and an elector under PU with yourself.
5. I would caution that for most countries taking the Byzantium start is likely better as Ottos tend to be a much more severe long term threat, and both give you a strong vassal.

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Medium: Nuke Muscovy Start: Recommended for hordes bordering Muscovy (i.e. Kazan and Great Horde) can also be done after a few years as Crimea and Nogai
This strategy aims to destroy Muscovy before it annexes Novgorod and snowballs into Russia by using your horde advantages despite your much smaller army. As Crimea or Nogai, it can be done after going to war with Great Horde and still follows broadly the same strategy.

1. Use your horde estate mechanics for additional manpower and 5k cavalry. Pray for good generals and split your force into two equal stacks.
2. Declare war on Muscovy some time into his war with Novgorod, this will give you time to send one stack (with your siege general) directly to Moskva. Your other stack should hang around Kasimov and snipe smaller enemy stacks. Always aim to fight in grasslands or steppes, and at this stage never engage any enemy you do not outnumber at least 3:1.
3. Once Muscovy has been sieged down, your goal is to gain warscore. To do this, you need to focus on liberating your own territories and killing Russian stacks.
4. There's no need to get too greedy here, but aim to take Moskva, and either Mozhaisk or Nizhny Novgorod (or both) to make your next fight easier.
5. A variant of this is uniquely possible for Oirat in which you attack Ming instead at game start.

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Medium: Swahili Coast Grab Start: Recommended for African countries in the Kongo region (Kongo, Kuba, etc) and Great Lakes (Rwanda, Burundi, Karagwe, etc) region
This strategy aims to mitigate the largest problem of starting in these regions: the lack of Feudalism institution, as well as the isolation and stagnation when there is no one else to conquer. Spending thousands of mana points trying to force develop it in your own provinces is expensive and slow, so this is a much better way.

1. Look for a small country on the Swahili coast with no allies (or one weak ally). This is very possible due to the early game rivalry set up, but might need one or two restarts. Your most likely candidates are Mombasa, Malindi, and Pate.
2. Declare a no-CB war on your chosen country on 11 Dec, taking care that your early game troops are actually vulnerable to native attacks when crossing the no-mans land.
3. Vassalize your candidate, and take one province to core with. Now you have Feudalism! It is recommended to focus your expansion southwards towards the gold mines of Mutapa, and you can now proceed with a fairly standard Kilwa game.
4. Unless you're going for the Hoarder achievement, it's probably a good idea to convert to another religion. You actually have two amazing options here. Sunni is immediately available and an all-round great religion. Alternatively, you can head north to pick up Coptic from Ethiopia.
5. While you might feel very rich, a dominant strategy at this point is to rush colonists in order to colonise South Africa and Southeast Asia, which will make you incredibly rich and also discourage Europeans from attacking you.

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Hard: Nuke Japan Settsu Start: Especially recommended for Ryukyu, but also useable by anyone with a decent navy and tributary to Ming (Pangsinian, Tondo, Korea, Donghai, Jianzhou), also useable in a limited capacity as Ming
This strategy uses the Enforce Peace mechanic to attack Hosokawa without calling in Ashikaga and the rest of the Japan into the war. It next uses the AI's tendency to underestimate big daddy Ming to conquer Kyoto and shut down Japan (or become the shogun if you're Ryukyu). As Ryukyu you can now begin your own shogun vassal swarm and aim for the Three Mountains achievement, for everyone else, it gives you an amazing expansion opportunity into a very rich region and slingshots your ability to spawn the Colonialism institution.

1. Start improving relations with Kono, Amago, and Tsutsui, these are the most likely targets for Hosokawa to attack once the Sengoku era begins. Build some galleys.
2. Closely monitor the progress of Hosokawa's invasion. Using gifts or any other interaction, bring your relations with the target of Hosokawa's invasion to 100.
3. You can now Enforce Peace on Hosokawa, which they will reject, and you are now at war with Hosokawa without the rest of Japan.
4. Move fast to capture Settsu, using the fact that your combined fleet likely gives you an edge in the siege. You can quite comfortably full annex Hosokawa in this way.
5. Pull your troops back to your homeland and start spying on Ashikaga, fabricating a claim on Kyoto. DO NOT ever insult Ashikaga, as this will make him declare a Diplomatic Insult war on you. Make some allies with decent navies, and do your best to ally Ainu.
6. If you're lucky (or you're Ryukyu), you can core the Hosokawa provinces before Ashikaga declares war on you. If you do this, you can full state these provinces and culture switch to a Japanese one (possibly unstating some of your own provinces).
7. Eventually Ashikaga will declare on you for Settsu, which will drag in Ming your protector (and your other allies).
8. Use your navy in tandem with Ming to snipe the Japanese navies. Do this in parts, engaging at first off the coast of China before moving slowly towards Japan itself. This will ensure that you do not fight the combined Japanese fleet all at once, which you will lose.
9. Once you have cleared the seas, Ming will land in the Kyushu region. By this time, Ashikaga should also have annexed Ainu, this is good.
10. To help him out, land your forces in Hokkaido, which will cause the Japanese to either split into half or head north, allowing Ming to siege the south of Japan in peace.
11. Eventually you'll be able to peace out, taking Kyoto and some provinces in Hokkaido (to give the colonial range for discovering America and spawning Colonialism).
12. If you were lucky and have Japanese culture now, before peacing out Ashikaga for Kyoto, you will need to take the Independent Daimyo reform which will cost you 10 corruption. When you capture Kyoto your capital will move there and all of Japan will become your vassals, also giving you the Shogunate reform which is the single most broken thing ever and will give you a very easy time at World Conquest.
13. Otherwise, by taking Kyoto, all the daimyos now become independent nations and you can wipe them up and conquer Japan for yourself.

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Hard: East Frisia -> HRE Start: Recommended for OPMs in Europe (Trebizond, Albania, Theodoro, Odoyev, Navarra)
This strategy uses the fact that East Frisia is an independent OPM which is not in the HRE. Historically, East Frisia was ruled by a group of fiercely independent chieftains which only joined the HRE in 1465, and then resisted every attempt to impose a foreign ruler. One cannot be too large to join the HRE, so this works best for small OPMs.

1. Restart until East Frisia either has no ally, or one relatively weak ally. Someone like Gelre, Friesland, or Utrecht. Then build to force limit and pray for a good siege general from your rulers.
2. Declare a no-CB war on East Frisia on 11 Dec.
3. Improve relations with everyone you need to get to East Frisia. There is no need to beeline there straight away, in fact, if you make your way there slowly, there's a very good chance that the ally (rarely East Frisia himself) will start a naval invasion of your capital, this is a good thing.
4. Stackwipe your enemies (not hard since East Frisia usually only has a 5k stack). If you're having trouble with that, wait until you have Mil tech 4, you're in no rush anyway. If you're lucky, the ally would now be sieging your capital and you don't have to worry about them. Instead, peace out the ally as soon as possible while leaving one unit in East Frisia to prevent him from building more troops, and other countries from capturing him.
5. There's a very good chance someone else has declared on East Frisia in this time. If no one has, move your troops in and out of the province until someone does. But since you're there first, you will be the siege leader. Most of the time this will be Friesland or Munster, possibly with Oldenburg as an ally. It is imperative that somebody else declares war on East Frisia as you will not have the coring distance to annex East Frisia otherwise.
6. Once you capture East Frisia, vassalize him, launching you into a Defensive War. Once you win that, take one province (otherwise you get too much AE), and core that province. For the next 10 years, improve relations with everyone, but Austria in particular. You can pick up some solid HRE allies like Brunswick, Brandenburg, and Hamburg which will discourage anyone from attacking you for a while.
7. After 10 years, annex East Frisia. Move your capital there, add the province to the HRE, and you can now complete the campaign as a Dutch 2 province minor in the HRE with an added random province somewhere else in Europe! From here, I would switch culture to Dutch asap to prevent the Dutch Revolts, and if your achievement allows it, form Netherlands (can be done for the Albania or Iberia achievement, but not the Gothic Invasion one).
8. I like this a lot more than the Ireland exodus since it gives you a better starting position, and allows you to keep your starting province safe. It seems way too cheesy to be playing a Trebizond game without actually owning Trebizond!

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Bonus: Transferring Subjects
This is not strictly a starting strategy, but more a great strategy for anyone with access. The Transfer Subject age bonus allows you to take vassals in a peace deal for half the cost, and this can land you some amazing vassals very early in the game. It is hence imperative to fulfill the early age bonuses (30 dev city and humiliate rival being the easy ones). The best vassals to go hunting for are:

1. Mongolia (96 dev): Best for hordes, Ming, Korea, Japan
   Owned by Oirat and unlikely to go independent for quite a while despite being disloyal. As an added bonus, Mongolia has a ton of cores on Oirat, Ming, and Korchin.
2. Yarkand (60 dev): Best for hordes (especially Uzbek and Oirat), Ming, Delhi, Timurids, Jaunpur
   Owned by Chagatai and likely to be annexed within 40 years. Grabbing Yarkand as a vassal is excellent because of its gold mines and its mountain forts which would otherwise make attacking it quite a nightmare.
3. Sweden (119 dev) and Norway (84 dev): Best for European majors playing the RM game - Austria, Poland, France, Castille, Bohemia
   Owned by Denmark and frequently disloyal, but if you fail to take them they will either declare independence or be annexed by Denmark which then becomes a large pink blob. Taking Sweden requires you to have the -20% province warscore cost from Diplomatic ideas, or you could go for Norway, which doesn't. Either way it cripples Denmark and opens up great expansion opportunities towards Russia.
4. Naples (91 dev): Best for Mediterranean majors who need to cripple Castille
   Owned by Aragon, and frequently inherited by Castille, which then uses it to dominate Italy. Taking Naples, unlike any other country on this list, will cause you to accrue a large amount of AE in the region and likely trigger a Coalition unless managed delicately. It will also give you a direct knife to the heart of Europe.
5. Transoxiana (127 dev), Fars (57 dev), and Afghanistan (47 dev): Best for hordes, Ottos, and Indian majors
   Owned by Timurids and extremely disloyal, though on occasion they lose the independence war and are retained as vassals. If that happens you don't have too much time since Timurids have cores on the bulk of their provinces and will annex them incredibly rapidly. Honestly I've only succeeded with this once, but if you do see it, go for it.