Another example of a late game specialised province, whose make up would be completely different from how it was in the early game, is the centre of learning.
As already described above briefly in the Research section, set the province to be Tax Exempt, while you concentrate on the research resource with no other resources to worry about!
Build a Basilica of Minerva in the capital for +8% research, and temples in the minor settlements for +4% each. Of course have a scriptorium (level IV) in the capital for +20%. This gives a +40% global research rate just from one province! If one of the settlements is a glassware town, make that +56%. The wealth bonuses from faster technology acquisition I believe would by the late game stage more than make up for loss of income from a province.
It doesn’t really matter what level the town buildings are, because they provide neither relevant wealth benefits nor food penalties. Just make sure public order is not too low because of level IV towns. The advantage of higher level towns are better garrisons and siege defence.
In such a province, there would be building slots to spare; unlike the military province there is much less public order to worry about, since research buildings don’t cost public order and the temples increase it. There is no need for wealth buildings, because you will get none anyway as it is Tax Exempt, and no concern over faction-wide food.
In these spare slots, you might build a level IV water tank building and produce agents of +3 experience from the province, or go for a dock in a minor settlement on the coast and a Basilica of Vulcan that provides an extra 2 ship building slots per turn. The trading tariff bonus for the wine trader line of buildings in the provincial capital is listed as 20% but I don’t know how it would apply to one province since trade income seems faction wide. If the bonus is faction-wide, clearly it is worth having in a Tax Exempt province with spare province capital slots. Finally, the province could provide a staging post function for a nearby military province by having in minor settlements equipment upgrade buildings that there was no room for in the military province.
Thus the make-up might be: Basilica of Minerva, Scriptorium, Basilica of Vulcan, Water tank upgrade (or wine trader) in capital, and in the minor settlements a dock, temples of Minerva and equipment upgrade buildings.
Since research boosts are faction-wide, there is no province-wide multiplier effect of having research buildings together unlike for certain wealth types or putting experience bonuses onto troops. The advantage of the centre of learning is that you don’t have to waste building plots on research in other provinces where you do want as many wealth buildings of a certain type clustered together. The Tax Exemption on the centre of learning means that research buildings costing food and other non wealth generating buildings costing food can be put together where their disadvantages will do minimum harm and the waste of wealth generation is minimal.
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