Usually, the very first thing I do is to set up a mail route between 2 towns with 1000+ pop. and 20-30 tiles apart. 10 to 16 4-horse mail carriages wil usually be sufficient. Set them on a shared timetable, and they will run perfectly for 200 years. You should use one-way signs to make the route totally deterministic, so the order won't get messed up.Hamilton2007 wrote:How did you make money so early on? Cause i'm in debt all over the place starting in 1700..
Then, you just have to be patient. Don't invest in anything more until you have a sound economy. Watch the profit graph.
After a few years, when you've paid the initial debt, move on to fishing. If the routes are straight it's like printing money. Use the bank; max out the loan, and pay back quickly. If you're lucky, you may catch some subsidies too.
And as I've said several times in this thread: It's important that you use the Squid ship set, as it tweaks some game parameters to make these slow ships profitable. Before Squid, it was very hard to make a decent profit on the Brigs.