Austrian trade strategy

[Ned Smelly]

I've been collecting in Venice since very early in my game as Austria, and I'm steering a good amount of trade there from <-Krakow, <-Pest, <-Ragusa<-Constantinople.
As I get more and more trade power in Genoa and Lubeck, it seems like a waste that I'm not earning anything there.
Is there anything I can do?

[bri]

Not expand into useless trade nodes...

Or go all in and move to a new home node that better suits your expansion plans.

[Marquoz]

I have two approaches to trade as Austria, both of which follow my EU4 mantra of "let trade guide your expansion."

1) Venice. I always take over the entirety of the Venice node in every Austria game and then start conquering the nodes that feed it, all the way to India and China. Whether or not I finish this process depends on...

2) The English Channel. If I get the Burgundian inheritance as Austria, I get early partial control of the game's best trade node. In that case, I switch my emphasis to conquest of France, England, the Americas, and most of Africa before pushing for India and China. But I start with Venice no matter what because the Inheritance isn't guaranteed.

Lubeck doesn't matter to me much either way. I will revoke the privilege as Austria after forcing all of Scandinavia into the HRE, so the swarm will have control of all of Lubeck. As for Genoa, it's fine to collect there if you earn more by doing so than by adding another merchant to the chain sending trade to the Channel or Venice. Or you can switch your emphasis to Genoa instead of Venice, since Genoa is a somewhat better node. But eventually the effect of trade steering means that having more than one collection point will be inferior to focusing everything on a single end node.