Nodes, governorship, friction, corruption and changing borders

Node types are predetermined and will probably be the same on all servers (not sure though). No one directly controls a node. You can have the majority of citizens be from one guild and in that way that guild can "control" what the node has/does, but there's no in-game direct control.

Nodes can have trade agreements and, iirc, become allies.

Corruption isn't meant to be a gameplay style. It's a penalty for those who murder pacifistic people.

According to some of the understandings we have of Freeholds, a lot of the interactions you were talking about will be 'in the game' through those. While Nodes have specific ways of being controlled by their Mayor (taxation and construction) and populace (just straight up killing people you don't want there until they get the hint, to an extent), a lot of the micromanagement of Nodes falls into the hands of individual players.

Even Economic nodes COULD be turned into 'Democratic' Nodes if you could trust your politician to not run off with the coin you give them to make sure they win the election.

The sub-nodes are not specifically required, because you can think of it in the other way. It is highly likely that two adjacent nodes will have many of the same players developing them at first, and one just becomes a Vassal of the other. So Node A also 'controls' the surrounding nodes as long as all players involved are okay with that, and then if problems arise, and this coalition breaks up, then the 'sub-nodes' would actually be regular ones with the chance to change the actual landscape directly.

We also have some indication that there may be ways for a collection of 'bandits' to form together and place Freeholds somewhat close together in the Zone of Influence of a Node, which MAY be a way to 'create a bandit camp' of players, but this is subject to a lot of currently untested things.