Newbie help

[ZippyRiver]

One option would be to make a number of criminal dragoons and go kill indians. Once they get promoted up to a free colonist, put them to work in your colonies and make another criminal/servant dragoon. If you don't want to eliminate the native city, you can park your units a couple of tiles away from the city and let the natives come to you. You will also get more battles that way.

Another option is build a school house in a criminal town. Bring in one specialist to be the teacher and the rest working fields. Once a servant becomes a free colonist, move them to another town so that you will continue upgrading second class citizens instead of making the specialist. With a college this process is faster (two teachers).

Or build a church. One thing to keep in mind if your going to spam missions. If you tick off that tribe (by attacking them), they might burn down all the missions you have in all their towns. That can be a lot missionaries lost (and a petty criminal missionary is a veteran solider with a little practice).

edit:
If you don't have ole' sour puss lasalle in your congress yet, you don't have to limit those feeder colonies to 2 colonists. I like to use him to get all my stockades built for free, but I won't select him until after I have Brewester (no more crooks on the docks). Colony defence is easily handled with a couple of artillery and dragoons, without a stockade

 

[say1988]

I avoided lasalle. I don't want to be stuck with some worthless town since I accidentally put a third villager into it. At least until I switch to full military mode (no enemies right now, at least none that require more than a couple dragoons).
I did finally enounter the English ~8 spaces south of my southern city. I had thought that that was the end of my continent, but the one unexplored square was an isthmus, and my small continent is apparently massive. Then the inca killed my scout
At least my privateers can have fun now.