I'm having economic problems, any advice?

[Skott]

Land clearance and communal farming upgrades both pay for themselves nicely.

If you are worried about squalor later, let the city rebel and then reconquer it, exterminating the population. More cash, less squalor. Big wins for everyone!

If you sack a city you kill less people but get more gold than exterminating (in RTW it was the other way around) so here's what you can do if you have the time and troops. Sack the city. Pull out and let it rebel or rebel again depending on how it started. Attack and sack it again. Yeah, there's less people but more than if you had exterminated the first time. Plus, sacking equals more gold. Attack and sack it a third time if its a really big city or maybe four times if you are really pissed off at them. Your troops and generals earn experience as well.

[lobo76]

Build an army (with at least one general), take over Timbuku and build forts on the Gold resource, and stuff it with merchants.

Once a city reaches Huge status, defend with 5 units. You only need to station them to man the towers. Whenever someone sieges, sally immediately and wait for the FREE cannon towers to send them running.

[HughTower]

Governors' traits can go up as well as down in cities but you have to micro-manage them. Personally, any new family member I get with the budding bureaucrat trait becomes a governor, the others field generals. The governors go to where trade is good, or I'll be doing a lot of building, & they tend to pick up positive traits which either save or make me ££. I think the key to avoiding negative is making sure that tax/public order ratio is optimal, religious unrest is under control, & essentially a good job is being done. I find it almosr as interesting to try & build these governors as my generals.

[katank]

@ Skott, I do realize that sacking gets you more gold. However, at that point in the game, gold is no longer such a big deal (who cares if I have 3 million or 4 million? might as well be infinite). The priority is more on getting the cities down to a reasonable population so they are easy to control. Extermination is better in this sense.

[Slicendice]

Put all the diplomats, crappy spies and assassins and lousy generals on a boat and sail it into the enemy fleet. The fewer sailors on the boat the better.
They'll go down to the bottom and you won't be paying them support anymore. (If I could just do that with my ex-wife!)

Timbuktu may not be as lucrative since you are so close to it, but if you choose that route then build a fort in the spot where you put a merchant and then fill the fort up with merchants. You can get 20 merchants in there all making tons of money and they are invulnerable to enemy merchant attack. I usually march a single general down there and recruit mercs when I lay seige. Once I take it I exterminate the city and disband the mercs. That way I'm not saddled with support, but the city doesn't need a large garison. The city is pagan, heretic, and Muslim so I never notice a hit to my reputation.

If you don't have trade rights and alliances with everyone then get them. Don't sack or exterminate cities unless they are completely Muslim because it will damage your reputation and make it harder to make alliances.

Remember to garison your cities with militia type troops and only those troops that each city can actually produce so that you are not paying support for them. They help reduce disorder and increase growth and or taxes.

Sacking a city is a way to make money but it also allows you to expand military beyond your capacity to support it. Think less military but better quality military. Disband troops you don't need. Also sacking and exterminating destroys buildings and it reduces your tax base. So basically you trade a short term cash influx for a long term cash flow.