Is there a proper way to engage in war when going for cultural victory?

I'm currently playing in a gigantic map and I believe only one Civ has been eliminated around the industrial era.

It has been a love fest like I've never seen before. For the majority of the game, I was one of 7-8 Civs in constant declaration of friendships and defensive/scientific agreements.

I engaged in war with a Civ who was an outlier of our grand party of friends and encroaching on my territory. This resulted, in a very short time, with my now being at war with nearly everybody. This led my tourism to start plummeting.

I'm not sure if the friendship could have lasted if I let the Civs encroach, since that often leads to war anyways, but I'm curious about your thoughts.

I can also see the value in really considering the positioning of your cities to avoid potential conflicts in proximity...

Is any war and a culture victory a no no? Maybe you can only go after the guy everyone hates?

Did you try denouncing the encroaching civ? That may have brought your friends into agreement that that was a leader that needed to be "dealt with". I don't know if it would have worked to bring your allies into declaring war on the encroaching civ first, but perhaps it would have made that civ wanna declare war on you first (avoiding a diplomatic penalty for declaring war).

When going for a cultural victory, you may need to eventually goto war. If any of the other civs have a high culture which is difficult for your tourism to overcome, the best method is to wipe them off the face of the map. You also get the added benefit of taking over any wonders the offending civ may have built. I often play culture victory by domination.

Mesix has some good points. It's very true that you may need to kill off a civ that is either too high in defensive culture, or too high in their own tourism.

I'd also add:

1) In G&K, I used to attack whoever owned the Sistine Chapel, as well as Alhambra, if it was possible to get my units to the city it was built in. Now in BNW, I've already had at least one game where I took the city the Louvre was in (and the Great Works in the Louvre with it) in order to set myself on the path for a cultural victory. As Mesix alluded to, you can attack a civ before it gets its culture going in order to take a wonder you missed out on and will need.

2) At higher levels, it may be best to sometimes kill off cultural CSes and slow down the growth of defensive culture for whoever was allied to it. While you yourself may not be able to ally the cultural CS, you can at least DoW it and puppet it so no one else can ally it either. Obviously, if you can ally it yourself, that may be best, but if an already high-defensive-culture AI is not letting your tourism rise against it, then puppet any cultural CSes it is allied to.

3) In special cases, it may be wise to attack a known problem civ in the early going. Siam is a cultural civ I sometimes target early enough that I hopefully delay Wats and make them spend gold to buy units rather than ally cultural CSes. Inca is a side that tends to spam wonders if left alone too long. Polynesia can become a problem down the line. Long story short, certain civs tend to hog cultural wonders, have uniques that give them extra culture, and/or ally a large number of CSes. I don't know about the BNW civs yet, but I'd imagine the new France, as well as Brazil, would be ones to keep an eye on. All this of course depends on meeting the civ early enough in the first place, so, it's not a common practice, but sometimes it's not a bad idea.

philosphically this is a great question in every game, especially when you know you're potentially tossing away open borders, et al

honestly there's no good answer for this, and in a very real perspective i think it's very cool from a developmental standpoint.

I love solving problems and i love loving problems to win. It's a great thing sometimes when i get frustrated I'm only playing on emperor. Maybe I'm scared or too annoyed to take it further.

My answer is the developers have done a great job putting ai in a position to make you question.

You know, going back, I was a big proponent of 1 upt and shared people my experiences of frustrating AI decisions when others argued all was meaningless.

Maybe you don't realize the inclusiveness necessary to make players cite these positions.

I think it's neat, and I appreciate it. How much work does it take to make an AI really competitive? To make other humans really complain?

We're participating in a landmark. Don't you think it's true?

I won a cultural victory as Venice where I warmongered and had some useful allies. Early on, Monty was nearby and attacked me which I took to mean that all his cities should become my puppets (I ended up leaving him one small city far to the South because I couldn't be bothered to march my army all the way down there). Later in the game (and after two more defensive wars had been handedly won), Alex had a culture much too high to overtake with my tourism. I DOW Alex while remaining on good terms with the remaining civs in the game. A few turns after taking the last Greek city, my jeans and pop music had spread to the final remaining civilization and I won a Cultural Victory with more than half of the map converted to puppets (and once CS annexed due to a bug in the Venice game mechanics which I reported in the bug thread).