I don't understand the Cultural Victory...

[master_dave]

Cultural victory seems strange in this game. Why do I have literally 10x culture and tourism than any other Civ, yet my culture doesn't dominate them?

I literally have 900 tourism and 800 cultural when the highest AI Civ has like 200 tourism and 200 culture, yet I'm not culturally dominating them.... WTF?

[Stormwinds]

In simplest terms, a Culture Victory is won when you have more cumulative tourism with met civilizations than the civilization that has accumulated the most culture has accumulated culture.

The way the game displays this is kind of confusing, but the general idea is that everything is cumulative. The number of tourists a civilization has is determined by the amount of culture they have generated over the course of the game. The foreign tourists you accumulate are determined by the amount of cumulative tourism you have generated with the civilizations that you have met.

If I'm bad at explaining it try this video from TheSaxyGamer:
https://youtu.be/GRcRXVfS94c

[grognardgary]

You have to be culturally dominant over all of them. And that can be really difficult when there is a land locked civ on another continent.

[Exemplar]

yes if you intend a cultural victory you should a: meet every opponent as early as possible. on most maps this makes cartography (or being maori or norway) a prerequisite. b: stack as many positive bonuses as possible on the 1-3 (depending total civs) opponents you can see are stacking tourism. for example, later governmental disparities, lack of trade routes and open borders, and other factors may be netting you 400 to 600 per turn -with that target- instead of the 900 you believe you have per turn.

to add: some amount of your tourism, from relics and holy city (+8) are a subset religious tourism. these points will get a 50% deduction if the target is a different religion and a further 50% when they get enlightenment (unless you're converting them and building cristo redentor) so if a large chunk of your tourism is from early hammered out relics a sizable portion is deducted plus the potential of another 40% from different governments in the 3rd and 4th tiers.

[Stormwinds]

You don't need to meet every civ in the game to win Culture Victory. It's easier and oftentimes more efficient to do so as you don't accumulate tourism with unmet civs. However, since the civ with the largest accumulated culture is your goalpost, you really only need to meet them.

[Exemplar]

well, i mean, if you don't, you might meet a runaway late and it would have taken far less time had you met them and started working on your bonuses early.

[grognardgary]

My first win was with trajan I was one country away from a cultural victory, Germany for so long that a won a science victory while I was waiting for Germany to flip.

[fmalfeas]

Originally posted by grognardgary:

My first win was with trajan I was one country away from a cultural victory, Germany for so long that a won a science victory while I was waiting for Germany to flip.

Rome is one of the easy ones to cultural with, because that free monument helps you get off to an early start.

[clop1000]

Is it really different from civ5?

[I Can Imagine Anything]

Culture victory is objectively the hardest victory type to win, so don't beat yourself up too bad. It's the most poorly explained, the most poorly executed, and the one reliant on the most luck.

This is why many militaristic civs have bonuses to culture, and visa versa. Sometimes you have to be a bit forceful with culturally enriching the world.