Quote Originally Posted by moonburn View Post
schools are great for your smart caracthers but as some drawbacks such as making some of your family members nerds and less able general
Actually "nerd" traits scholastic and such don't matter so much with generals as those only give hit point and influence minuses whereas atheist and like traits received usually from level 2-3 academies give morale penalties to troops which is far worse than less hit points to your general (moonburn probably knows this but I just thought to bring it up).

Like moonburn said bonuses from markets don't make so much difference in early game and you have construct quite extensive trade routes (land locked provinces are so much worse on this) before you can reap the profits, but if you control shall we say Italy and Illyria your provinces can give almost as good income from trading than what you get from mines.
With barbarians and nomads controlling many coastal provinces becomes even more important due to their primitive infrastructure.