Hey, Newbie here (read the FAQ)

[overweightninja]

Hey, great title for a newbie thread

The trade building doesnt say it adds trade, ports are like 12,000!

Just to expand on the ports thing, in some provinces higher levels of trading ports are prohibitively expensive and take a long time to build. This is to represent a region which lacks a large enough natural harbour or the means to create one, and is a way of representing the effort involved in changing the land to be suitable.

if you are early in a campaign, dont build trade ports, as they cost too much or mines or any other building like that that costs loads of money, just conquer places and when you have at least over 150,000 mnai, then focus on extra things such as ports, because i use that strategy and it seems to work fine.

With the Romani you can get away with skimping on ports and mines for the early part of the game certainly (they are one of the few factions who begin the game making a profit even) but I would not neglect them, especially with some of the other factions. Apart from the afformentioned harbour rebuilding projects, increasing the size of a port or adding a some mines if you can afford it usually nets a rather nice return.

Konny made a thread a little while back detailing reccomendations for government placement etc with lots of pretty diagrams for the Romani, might be useful for you, find it here.

Hope that helps
Cheers