What makes a province a money sink?

[Kekkonen]

I've started twice with the Julii. In both games, about the third senate mission sends me to take Patavium. That I've always done, because both Mediolanium and Patavium seem like the obvious early targets. However, in both games Mediolanium and especially Patavium soon develop into real money sinks. Mediolanium I can sort of understand -- the province is not rich in resources and doesn't have a coastline for sea trade -- but I really can't understand why that happens to Patavium (which, incidentally, ended up being my biggest city in both games, despite being heavily taxed in a desperate effort to stop the denarii drain).

[chemchok]

I've started twice with the Julii. In both games, about the third senate mission sends me to take Patavium. That I've always done, because both Mediolanium and Patavium seem like the obvious early targets. However, in both games Mediolanium and especially Patavium soon develop into real money sinks. Mediolanium I can sort of understand -- the province is not rich in resources and doesn't have a coastline for sea trade -- but I really can't understand why that happens to Patavium (which, incidentally, ended up being my biggest city in both games, despite being heavily taxed in a desperate effort to stop the denarii drain).
In the case of Patavium, it looks like a big money sink because it has a big population. This means it's supporting a large percentage of your global units and is actually earning money for you, not losing it. Try this, add up the support costs of your garrison and any entertainment [games/races] in Patavium. Then look and see how much it's paying out in support costs. I'm betting the support costs it's paying are going to be a lot larger than your garrison and other local expenses.

[Midnight]

The bigger cities generally do lose the most money, because they end up paying most of the bill for your army's upkeep (which is shared between your provinces). This had me worried to start with, seeing my biggest towns losing more and more, but it's fine to have a few towns like this - what matters is seeing your total denari rise at the end of the turn

[Kekkonen]

OK, thanks for the quick answers. That also settles my other question: I was wondering why that little village right across the top of the Italian boot was making such huge amounts of denarii (but I wasn't going to ask about it because I don't really see that as a problem ~:) ).

[Kagetora]

a way to help the towns gain more cash, build bigger ports first, they will add an extra 100-200 denarii pending the sea trades, try putting some province on Automanage Financial build policy and you probably see the income go up and this is not just due to high tax rate, be sure you have the necessary temple upgrades first though.

[Ashitaka-san]

Yeah, if you want to get a better idea of the money generated by a city, look at the details. You might be suprised here that the city is generating a good amount of money but, because of the population, it has to pay for a lot of the support costs.
So, in actuallity, it is generating more revenue than that smaller city, that has, say, +400 net, but it has to pay for more, so it ends up with a low net that can even be in the negative range.