Just started playing this after owning it for over a year. I find it hugely frustrating!
Not just sure if it takes a while for everything to get going but I find it impossible to make money, battles are impossible to win and almost whatever you do tends to land you in a war almost immediately with factions belting around with 25k or more troops when I can't really even field more than 14k without an economic meltdown.
The gold thing I find most frustrating. I'm following all the tips around diverting trade and using my ships to boost my slice of the pie I'm taking but even then I'm pulling in 2-3 gold unless I mothball my fleets. If I get up to 4-5 gold (which is best I've ever managed) if I then end up in a war it nosedives to negative figures especially if I try to improve my forces.
I was able to get the technology to build a market but it was 600g which I would never see without about 10 years of doing nothing but sit and save. Then in general technology and idea development just seems so slow.
Am I missing something fundamental or do you have to accept 50 years of in game tedium and surviving before stuff starts happening?
I really want to like this game as the complexity seems brilliant but at the moment I'm losing the will to play much more.
Making money is easier as certain countries/nations, but your economy is scaled somewhat to your size. You can't field huge armies as a small nation and expect to make money, if playing aggressively you may even find you are taking loans and debasing currency to keep going.
However if you are in a war with a few countries and winning decisively, you can peace them out separately for cash and/or war reparations (10% of their income for 10 years). You can also take money from the Burgher estate once every 10 years if you have the right DLC. This scales with income.
Early game don't bother with fleets too much unless you need them to get about, I find they can often be a liability, and when you are at war they can't always operate anyway, or they get destroyed because you forgot to send them home before declaring war.
For general cash flow, lower army maintenance to nothing or almost nothing during peacetime. Mothball your "non" light ships, the ones that don't deal in trade power if you have them. Only raise maintenance if you are about to declare war or you have rebellions over 80% that are about to pop.
If you have the Institutions in your game like Renaissance etc, you can also spend monarch points to develop them, so you can even start the game as a small OPM (one province minor) and develop your single province to have 35-40 development after the Renaissance triggers beyond 1450, which can obviously help a lot with your income and manpower base.
When taking provinces in wars, after coring and making them states, the high development ones should potentially also have autonomy lowered to increase their value to you, probably have to deal with a rebellion at some point but usually worth it if you sit your troops on it defensively first.
For trade in general, to get the best trade power in the trade nodes you want to own as many provinces as possible in that trade node, especially the "centers of trade". You can see them in the Trade map mode. The light ships are often better placed in other lucrative trade nodes where you are collecting trade.
The buildings that increase your income actually normally cost around 100 gold each for the basic ones, going up higher. Were you looking at the Manufactories? They are more expensive/late game buildings.
For support try and get at least 1-3 allies, early game, you can get away with less later, but the end game is to get a good alliance with a major power if you are small. Especially one that is not situated where you want to expand.
The Common Sense and Art of War DLCs in particular are well worth getting - they're usually on sale somewhere.