Im that house of... Brutii i think... whatever, im that giant red house that you start with.

Above Rome i think.

Anyway, Ive got 3 major cities and my population is around 36000 in my capital (that may not be much i dunno xD) Anyway, their happiness is top, they are growing and nothing is going wrong.

Besides the fact that they are making -3000 gold a turn.

Whats up with that? The Tax rate is normal but even if i did raise it, they would still loose money. Is that what happens with all big cities or is it something wrong im doing?

House of Julii is what you are, what you need to do is quickly conquer as many Gaul settlements as you can from the start, once you get to Spain you can actually use a navy and get some trade overseas.

If you were Brutii the green roman faction you'd be able to quickly take Greece and that would give you a massive income through trade making it easier to buy settlements instead of conquering them, that way you can keep more units to defend the settlement or take another.

The Scipii have to use their navy from the start, after conquering Sicily you'd be able to use your navy to blockade, conquer and buy anywhere in the Mediteranian sea and after taking all the coastal settlements you'd have an income so high you wouldn't be able to go bankrupt unless you really tried.

If the population of one of your settlements get too high let them rebel and exterminate them after winning the battle to retake it and to slow down the threat of overpopulation only build the most basic farm and keep the taxes as high as you can get at least 80% civil order with.

For any other factions, secure yourself against the earliest threat, either by defence or conquest, while doing this you should try to build the best trade income you can, this will also give you access to spies and assassins who'll get you all the info you need, open the doors to a settlement during sieges and weaken the enemy's morale.

Ive gotten spain, England, and some germanic stuff on the way.

Ive basically got the entire West side of the map. (except Africa, blue guy got that)

Wait, you want me to stop a growing population and let them rebel?

:S Ah... ill stick with loosing money xD

Im still earning money but around 5k only.

Use peasants to garrison cities that aren't likely to be attacked. There is an upkeep cost per turn for every type of soldier unit you have, peasants have the cheapest upkeep cost, city watch are the second cheapest.

Improve your roads, ports and markets to increase trade in each city, which increases your income. Improving your farms can increase your income but also increases population growth. Markets also increase population growth, which has both good and bad effects (more people = more money, but fast population growth = more unhappiness).

You don't have to keep every city's happiness in green, it's ok if they're yellow, so if you have cities that have very high levels of happiness, you can increase the tax rates for those cities to earn more money but still stay in yellow happiness.

quote A-Nony-Mouse

You don't have to keep every city's happiness in green, it's ok if they're yellow

I went one beter, It's okay if they're blue, at least only just blue 80% public order for this.

Advanced farms are good for early population booms, but have the ability to *bleep* you in the long run, as long as my cities have at least 80% public order and I'm recieving an income I can keep the population growth to a minimum.

Here's what I do when I take a settlement, first I build a dirt road, if the settlement is going to be under threat from an enemy within a few turns I'll build a wooden palasade instead, then I get some basic defences until I'm on the second settlement level then I build the basic port, the basic trade structure and then paved roads after that I upgrade the port and trade structure every time the settlement levels up, this give me more monay through trade and access to the spy and assassin units and each port has 1 trade route per level, with 3 levels that's up to 3 different settlements/allies giving you extra money for every port you have, as long as the destinations have a port to trade with.