So, what else is new in v1.5?

[Boohugh]

I agree the economy does start off slowly but it can certainly pick up later in the game and, as in the past, the trade nodes seem to be the key. I've been playing a fresh 1.5 Swedish campaign and for a long time I was only just making ends meat (I conquered all Russian and Poland-Lithuanian territory) so I branched out and sent a very significant fleet of trade ships around the world. I now control 12 trade spots and have 5 Indiamen on each and went from making 7-8k a turn profit (with taxes on the 2nd of the 4 slider positions from the left) to 40k just from that, which does wonders to the old treasury balance. It means I'm now in a position where I have been able to upgrade every single thing in every territory just for the fun of it, although I've basically won the game by this point (about 1750) as nothing is able to stop me. This is all playing on normal campaign difficulty.

I don't think the economics are in that bad a position. You get just enough money to do what you need to earlier in the game to make it challenging, but you get more later on to have some fun with when you've basically won anyway. If you don't take advantage of the trade nodes you'll really struggle though, so perhaps there could be a small shift to slightly less trade income and slightly more tax income. As it currently stands, you can't really make a decent empire without hogging the trade nodes.