* Cities of Governors in training should be set to Low Taxes all the time– opening and furthering the line of Strategic Chivalry traits increasing your governor’s Respect and allowing him to boost city growth rate – which is crucial on VH where AI gets 2% growth bonus and good governors can make up for it and allow you to keep up. Having Feared governors as opposed to Respected ones might give some positive traits here and there – but doesn’t boost population growth so is useless in the long run and such characters shouldn’t be considered for governor positions at all. 7 and more Respect = +1% population growth.
* Taxes should be switched to Very High when a building is being completed (for the last turn of construction every time a governor is present in a city) – this (depending on the type of constructed building) will make your governors Skilled Bureaucrats, Traders and Taxmen vastly increasing your incomes and law (happiness and growth) of your cities. As a habit, you should go through all your cities before you press “next turn” and change taxes to very high in all places where buildings are being completed. If you don’t, prepare for your governors to become Bad Administrators, Traders and Taxmen reducing your income by a huge chunk. You get a chance of increasing governor skill while training military units on High and Very High taxes – but (unlike for buildings) you don’t get a penalty for not doing so – so there’s no need to manipulate taxes when training armies – but also there’s an additional way of boosting skill when money is abundant by raising taxes, disbanding and training garrisons over and over again.
* Sending a governor on a tour to cities where important buildings like walls, roads, mines, ports, town halls or farms are being finished and letting him to govern the city on the last turn of their construction will give him a number of great traits. Good Miner, Farmer and Builder traits really rock at their highest levels – so if you have a number of smaller cities surrounding a big one (Edoras for example or Bree), governor from this big city should make a tour of surrounding lands and build there all the mentioned above buildings to get high levels of multiple good traits and use them in the biggest city after his return where benefit from it will be immense. It pays off more to have an amazing governor in the biggest city than a number of mediocre ones in small cities.
* Governors in training should be in cities rather than castles – you can’t manipulate taxes in a castle so your young governor will learn nothing there. Either send already grown governor to castles (7 or more Respect like Gandalf to Amon Sul) – or let governors from nearby cities finish constructions of important buildings (mentioned above) in the castles to benefit from good traits when they go back to governing their city.
* Always exit a city when one of Brothel line of buildings is being finished (Inn, Vineyard and such). Don’t let your governor be present when one of those is created or he might get multiple bad traits, including the dreaded corruption traits.
* Build markets. They might not give much income boost and won’t pay for themselves in money – but if you let your people govern cities without at least basic grain exchanges, they will become Bad Traders reducing your trade revenue by whooping 10-30%. Be careful about Merchant Banks, they might lead to corruption and in general aren't worth the investment.
* Art is good for governors. Build artistic buildings and let your early governors get Aesthetic line of traits. They will lose their command stars (which they don’t need) but at the same time it will make their growing up children Austere boosting your tax incomes up to 10%. Artistic buildings being built and in general being present in cities will also give your governors Cultured line of traits increasing public order. This is natural and very early for Elven characters, others have to wait quite a while.
* In general staying in very developed cities with 100% movement points will give plenty of good traits and ancillaries like Mathematician or Rhetoric related to education so fresh governors should always make a trip to your libraries before you give them a city to rule.
* Don’t raze buildings when you have 15000 or more money. This will make your governor look Unjust and reduce his Respect.