I'm after advice. What it boils down to is that I simply can't get the early game to "work" profitably, and really wish I could!
Starting a brand new game, 1800 or thereabouts, I can make stagecoach lines within a city of reasonable size turn a small profit. However, when I connect these cities together, usually with ships (only thing with decent speed/capacity), e.g. the blackwall frigate, I get very low passenger demand to use the intercity service. Very low indeed.. Far less than I suspect I would get 50 years later with a rail service between similar cities. Which makes the route nowhere close to profitable.
My first question is why does nobody want to travel on the ship (too slow? but it's not like there's anything else faster...) Secondly, is my approach wrong, is there a "better way"?