So, as I said, I'm a noob. All I've really played is ottomans but I wanted to spice it up and try an NZ minor for shits n gigs.

Aotorea is formed by playing as any of the 7 NZ OPMs and conquering all of your neighbours. It doesn't have unique national ideas so I'm not sure what the benefit is aside from clout. Before I get into it, as has been pointed out on this sub before, the mission tree for these tribes is absolute whack and makes zero sense. Briefly, the overarching strategy is to follow the mission tree, force spawn feudalism, conquer neighbours, then go exploration and expansion.

Moving on, all 7 of the OPMs on NZ are basically equivalent aside from geography other than Waitaha I believe which has pretty low starting dev (something like 4 instead of 10). Also, all of these nations are tribal chiefdoms, starting at tech 2 and no feudalism. Technically, you can start as any one of these that you want but Ranguini is hands down the best. The reason for this is that Ranginui shares a land border with four other nations, and has the best terrain in the region (woodlands) with the highest starting dev in the region.

From a lot of restarts, I've found out that sharing as many land borders as possible is incredibly important in this region. NZ is a naval theatre and early on your navy isn't that great. You get 8 barques and 3 cogs like everyone else, which means unless you have an admiral and are in a 1v1 war, your navy will be crushed. If you play as a nation that doesn't share too many land borders then expansion will be more RNG dependent as your one neighbour could get a bunch of allies. You won't be able to fabricate claims and will have no option to no CB your neighbours as a nation with terrible starting tech, essentially wasting admin.

Ranginui provides THE most reliable starts every time. You will have three rivals: Tainui, Awa and normally Kanghunu. You can ally Toa to help you with land invasions. Allying Ngapuhi or Waitaha are useless as they are cut off from everyone.

Your opening strategy will to be focus on completing the missions that grant flat MP, many of which are tied to prestige, securing your ally/currying favours and planning your first wars. You also want to royal marry Toa, Tonga and Samoa for the mission that grants DIP when you get enough prestige. With one diplomat currying favours, use the other to get claims everywhere ASAP.

When you load up the game you want to ally Toa, rival all the people who rivalled you and insult them. DIP and MIL dev your capital then do estate stuff. Take patronage of the arts, loans, and all the MP privileges. Seize land and take the ADM dev agenda. This agenda grants prestige upon completing. Save your ADM to get 1 stab then put all your mil points into devving your capital. It's definitely worth it to use the state edict to lower dev cost. Do this until you can embrace feudalism and don't conquer a single province until you do to ensure the cost remains as 1 ducat.

Once you get 1 stab prestige generation will skyrocket and you'll get to gain mana. Do this and take the 20% manpower reform because it's OP and the other one is shit. There will soon be a shiny button lighting up called "centralise the realm" don't click this, it's bait. It will turn you into a kingdom and you'll lose the force migrate CB which means you can no longer show strength to literally anyone around you.

Waiting around for MP generation with shit rulers and no advisors is going to take some time so we're not going to do that. All the NZ minors are tribal chiefdoms just like you, and so are the three Fiji minors. This means we can declare war on them all and 100% them to show strength and get 100 of each monarch point for victory.

Now, I've tested invading my neighbours to show strength but what I've found is that it doesn't appear to be worth it. The problem is you tend to be truce locked when you do finally want to use conquest CBs and time is against you with the the negative income you'll usually have. Using my strategy I normally get admin tech 5 and exploration ideas around the 1470s and with 15 year truce timers there's not a lot of window of opportunity. Someone better than me who can min max harder can surely get more value out of show strength, but for me I can be happy with 600 of each MP from show strength before turning into a tribal kingdom. Furthermore, defeating armies/navies in this region is devastating and will just mean that another neighbour will take the province a year later. So in some circumstances it can be good: show strength to Tainui, wait for Ngapuhi to conquer then conquer Ngapuhi for instance.

What I like to do is have a look at Fiji and see who I can invade out of the three OPMs there that are all connected by straits. Usually at least one of these guys has no allies so I get mil access with one of them, build my army to force limit and invade. Then I also start building the navy to force limit. I repeat this process for all three minors where possible. Normally I can show strength to at least two minors, twice, before becoming a kingdom. Waitaha is another good candidate for showing strength because they're weak and easy to land troops onto the unclaimed provinces near them before a war. You should be guaranteed at the bare minimum 200 of each MP in your first cycle of wars. They're also normally the last minor you'll be conquering. So basically, show strength to anyone far away whenever possible to get all the MP you need for devving.

This way, it's not too hard to get feudalism. Once you've got feudalism you want to stop devving, start getting techs and begin your conquest. One thing I need to stress is that navies are king here and with blockades you'll shave a LOT of time off your conquests, especially when they start building forts. Having a weak navy will also fuck you badly if you go to war with someone you don't border that you can't get land access to because it will essentially be a wasted war while they hide across a strait or something. In EVERY war make sure you DECIMATE the opponents navy. They have one province each meaning that recovery will take 10 years and they won't have the money to do it anyway. This also means that if you get lucky and can invade Fiji minors individually at first, but then get unlucky and they ally someone, then you can still beat their navy and land troops.

Once you've devved you should also be making ducats or breaking even hopefully and able to field your army without falling into a debt spiral.

So have a look around and see which neighbour you can invade in a 1v1 or 2v2 war. Make sure you are ready to invade from the get go so that you are the war leader for the siege. Allies tend to be ok at helping land fights but bad with naval ones in my experience here. I like to try to invade Awa and Langhunu first to unite my home area/state before conquering the next state. Then I turn my attention to Tainui and Ngapuhi. Try to dissolve your alliance with Toa sometime around here so you aren't waiting for the truce timer. Finally, go after Waitaha.

When you get enough splendour take the claims bordering claims perk first because the stupid AI waitaha likes to migrate making fabricating impossible without it, but the equally stupid Toa AI also likes to follow them meaning you can still reach them to fabricate if you already fabricated on them. Did you get all that?

Once you've united NZ you'll either have just shown strength to the Fiji minors for the second time or are just about to. Do that and then centralise the realm. You should have or be about to form Aotorea too.

If your dumb Waitaha AI migrated that means that the mission "colonise southern island" will be nerfed and you'll be forced to manually settle one of the NZ provinces as the mission hasn't been coded to account for migrations.

So now what? You've united NZ into Aotorea and have become a tribal kingdom, yay! Congratulations if you made it next far but where do you go from here? It should be around 1470s soooo....

1. You'll have your first national ideas coming soon and I like to take Exploration and Expansion. I don't really see viable alternatives tbh. From this point you're very safe and don't really need an army so can destroy everything but 1 infantry per colonist and send it to the easy to colonise polynesian provinces. Keep building your navy and protecting trade. Dev a second province up to spawn renaissance too. I use the native trade (middle) policy because I want the extra dev.
2. Your final reform tier will come soon too. I went Republic. Why did I go Republic? Because all my fucking rulers were shit and I wanted to play tall on NZ. I enjoyed the chilled out game of building my economy at home while island hopping and getting tonnes of monarch points. With no external threats and lack of standing army I was investing in my economy and buying advisors.
3. For my third idea set I took innovative because I was determined to not only bridge the tech gap but overtake everyone else. And dare I say I would've gotten away with it too if...
4. If I hadn't decided to conquer sulawesi spice islands in like 10 years. This put me on the great powers list which was pretty cool ofc but I ended up getting torn apart by rebels due to overextension, and my already struggling tech was even worse from giving up all those admin points from coring and mil points from harsh treatment, debt spiralled from mercs and I went bankrupt and a small peasant rebellion in NZ was enough to finish me off. Don't do this, just be chill, Aotorea is easy wins.
5. Australia is also a good choice for colonising but I recommend going to Moluccas first because the natives start getting scary confederations with lots of troops. You'll also not want to be spending all your admin on coring so early.