Manziel said:
well, the problem with sweden is that your starting provinces are pretty poor. so focussing on production does not improve much for the first time. production is a good idea if you have lots of rich provinces, oversea provinces or provinces with different culture/religion.
trading is not a must, but it can help to get some money to finance your expansion.
I disagree that Production doesn't make a difference for a poor nation. I play as Norway, and what I find most effective at first is to get my Tax and Production values up as much as possible. The Trading income will come later, after I've had the chance to move sliders a few times towards Free Trade and to make other shifts (like taking Shrewd NI) to make Trade worthwhile.
Building a Workshop in a poor province has a far more noticeable effect than doing the same in a rich one, measuring as a percentage change. Going from 1 to 3 (yes I know this is in terms of Tax not Production, just bear with the example) is a much greater change than going from 6 to 8. And, to get the Production numbers up, all it really takes is settling a few decent high-value provinces, which I usually do by claiming my share of Caribbean colonies. One good city producing sugar can equal the whole sum of my production back on mainland Norway! Again, for a rich country like France, that single sugar province isn't going to affect them as much.
In terms of what research to prioritize, though, I don't invest in Production all that much; I focus on Government and Land, almost exclusively. With Gov't techs I can build more province improvements, and gain NI slots in which I can place Smithian Econ or Bureaucracy, to further up both Taxes and Production.
I tend to take Shrewd Commerce as a third (or later) NI and stay out of the markets until then. By that point, my sliders are set so I get enough merchants to make a difference, and if I'm lucky I've also discovered a New World COT that I can have mostly to myself.
