Grading and site prep
Shape the ground so water leaves. Everything else is downstream of this.
We are happy to do grading as its own job. Plenty of people want a solid gravel surface now and asphalt in a couple of years, and doing the dirt work properly today means the paving later is straightforward.
It is also the work most likely to be skipped by a low bid, because it is the part nobody sees when the job is finished.
Water is the only thing that actually destroys pavement
Asphalt does not wear out from cars. In this climate it fails because water sat where it should not have, froze, and pushed things apart. Grading is how you decide where water goes for the next twenty years, and it costs far less to get right the first time than to chase afterwards. If the grade is wrong, no amount of asphalt on top of it will save the job.