Most trade nodes fall into this category, examples would be London, Seville and Frankfurt. (II) Connecting nodes: These nodes have incoming and outgoing connections. An example for this is the Hudson Bay node and the Beijing node. (I) Starting nodes: These are on the upper end of the trade network and do only have outgoing connections. The trade network consists of 3 types of trade nodes: If you want an easy visualization and RL analogy, think of a river network where several streams flow into other rivers. Another important thing to keep in mind is that the trade network is static, so the connection between the nodes will never change and neither will the direction of the flow. This is because the EU4 system abstracts trade as trade value (abbreviated TV from here on) instead of actual goods being moved around. It is important to realize that trade does only flow one way in this network - the arrows in the trade map mode show you the direction. Centers of Trade (or Trade Nodes as they are called in EU4) are no longer isolated, instead they are part of a world-wide trade network and connected with each other. This is by far the most important change compared to EU3. Let me try to shed some light on the mechanics, how they work and give you a hint how to use them to get an advantage over your enemies.
So there is some confusion about the new trade system in EU4.
