I am not making enough money, help!!

[andrewt]

Remember, ETW is different from earlier games in that a land grab doesn't necessarily mean your income skyrockets. As UP, I conquered the Spanish provinces in the Americas first. Since I cut taxes because I wanted to grow them faster I was getting no tax income from the newly conquered provinces for a long while.

The only way to make money on these newly conquered provinces (unless you tax them) is to build/upgrade the trade buildings they have. However, some of them don't have a port to start with and have no land route to a port. For example, Panama and Guatemala can't export anything until the port in their region grows. They're connected to each other and to Mexico/Bogota but by forested regions, not roads. I'm pretty sure Caracas is the same thing. Florida doesn't start out with a port, either.

So for a lot of these provinces, you won't make any tax income if you want to grow them and you won't make any trade income until a port in the province grows.

And yes, disband your militias. Town watch is cheaper but there's a limit into how much repression it can do.