Income from taxes and production

[Eidgeniesser]

Noob question here:

I usually play as trade focussed empires like Burgundy/Prussia/Italy/maybe France with provinces in the end nodes. Build markets and workshops and manufactories, develop production, strengthen mercantilism and build light ships. Conquer and colonize to control incoming nodes. Its the meta I know.

It seems to me that nations like PL, Russia and Austria can't play the trade game as well because they're not at end nodes. What is the economic meta for nations which don't have the end node advantage? Am I correct to assume they should rely on tax and maybe production? Is there any way to exponentially increase tax and production income as you do with trade? Or should you somehow try to make the Vienna trade node a sort of end node by controlling all areas and having high mercantilism?

I know Austria has the Venice trade node, but it seems to me that the incoming trade value only gets worse throughout the game. This goes for most of eastern Europe. Can they catch up to the western trade nodes? Or should they focus on conquering taxes and production?

 

[Dothor]

There is Economy idea group for taxation. You can build church and mosque for better tax.

 

[Titanius Puffin]

End-nodes are always the strongest, and trade is by far the greatest way to get income. Production income increases slowly as you tech up, but tax doesn't seem to.

In my experience, trade is still lucrative if you don't hold an end node. Upstream merchants still provide their 10% trade power stack when you divert trade homeward, and controlling downstream nodes deprives other powers (of some) of the ability to pull trade onward.