I recently tried different economy setups for the late game and stumbled across an interesting dilemma: What economy type to run for a lategame cultural victory?
I'm not referring to a 'Tech to liberalism, ignore research and celebrate how awesome your culture is until the rest of the world bows down to you out of sheer pity' approach but one where one techs into the modern age and probably relies on the American entertainment wonders and corporations.


Option A: Run artists in one's culture cities, do whatever else one does for normal gameplay. Artists are very efficient, gaining one culture where one needs it and still contribute somewhat to general research (4 beakers with representation). Since one is running Free Speech anyway, I assume many of the other cities will run cottages unless they have the chance to pump out another Great Artist.

Option B: Run cottages in the big 3, specialists elsewhere and channel commerce into culture... functionally similar to a Bureaucratic SE with cottages in the capital. This has the disadvantage of wasting incidental commerce from rivers/resources/trade, but practically eradicates happiness concerns and wins more quickly.
This seems attractive for a warlike finish when domination is problematic for whatever reason, using war mostly to slow the competitors down. Running culture everywhere could also help scavenging if two AIs are locked in a war, and cities exchange hands frequently.


Are there other attractive options?

I think those two sum it up, actually. I prefer the trio of GP farms because it also cranks out lots of artists for you, and GAs win culture victories. (Or if you're already going to win it, they win it faster).

When I go for culture (which is usually never because I find it boring and too easy) I usually end up with two culture GA farms and one wonder-full production city as my third. The GP farms crank out culture and contribute the odd GA to the wonder city to make sure it keeps pace.

I'm not a cultural victory person (should try one someday) but I hear lots of people talking about corporations that bring in lots of culture in the late game?

Hopping out of lurker mode here; I play culture games almost exclusively, and win fairly regularly at Monarch. In my experience, a culture game is well and truly over before corporations come into play.

As per the previous post, if you start a game intending to win via culture it is almost impossible to lose. Place three GP farms and it is loleasy mode. Toss up three good cities, 2 farms and 1 farm/mine, and throw your borders open so that every religion passes through. You then simply string some support cities which basically pump out temples for every religion you get, cottage them up and income is fairly moot. 9 cities all up, and you will rack up a very impressive score for the minimal effort required.

You do need to field a fairly significant army against the aggressive AIs; once you start nearing a cultural win they will all tend to attack you en masse to prevent victory. I have lost more than one game at 1800 because of inadequate defenses.

C) Qin Shi Huang the Wonderspammer. Easy to get your Wonder city to Legendary, and you're probably going to generate more than a few Great Artists to settle in a second city that also gets the Hermitage and some other high-culture national Wonder+Cathedrals. Do whatever you want for the third city (back-up Wonder-builder, run a lot of artists, etc.). The Chinese Pavilion is great for Culture Victories.