I just had a couple of questions:
What exactly does the "Adding 1000 Citizen" button do? I've never seen any effect from it.
Also how does the reputation effect work? Sometimes it seems to raise it and other times it does nothing. Is it in a random city?
Give a lot of money to the church and pray there a lot. It also helps to give food to the beggars so that your city will grow and always commission a new ship or two. All of these things will raise your reputation in a city, especially donating to the church.