Research

This is a faction-wide resource that speeds the development of new technologies. Since many of these technologies and technology groupings provide economic bonuses, faster research will provide a real benefit in terms of other resources. Even late technologies are useful to have and it takes many turns to get them all. It is unlikely you will do so by the end of the game so it is worth researching as fast as you can.

There are many ways of gaining a boost to research, such as being in possession of provinces that have wonders. (The benefits of any wonders are listed to the bottom left of the window that shows the income, public order and food of the selected province, under Province Effects and next to any other province wide effects such as inspired populace or an edict.)

From the point of view of buildings, a good way to stimulate research is to have a single “Centre of Learning” (for example see the Centre of Learning Province page), rather than research buildings spread out across your provinces. The centre should be a safe province that you are unlikely to lose and may be tax exempt, sacrificing the rather meagre wealth gains (meagre because too many of your buildings are otherwise dedicated to research or making up the deficit in food to have many wealth producing buildings anyway). You also avoid wasting city centre slots in other provinces where the wealth earned would be further increased by additional wealth multipliers in those provinces.