That is VERY strange because playing as the Illyrians with over 100 turns left on standard difficulty I have 1 city with 11,000 culture and 2 others with about 6,000... don't you need 10,000 in 3 cities to win a cultural victory?
i play epic/marathon so the goal is above 100.000 (i guess 100 & 150k). it's easy to reach fixed bonuses for culture with wonders and buildings, but +xx% is the key point for cultural victory and without these buildings i do not feel like it's reachable in "normal diffculty" (for me = monarch).
i'm currently trying to reach it playing babylon (the best fitted, with mycenians) at warlord difficulty (sic) in normal speed.
it's quite frustating not to reach cultural after having reached domination 2 times
[edit]
ok, just reached cultural victory in easy mode (warlord) just 6 turns before the end doing everything possible, running at 80-100% cultural the last 200 turns. Having tested many games (around 10 with this version) Domination/Conquest are easier than cultural. Fast games + medium/small map are necessary for cultural.
But still very frustrating to have to play "easy mode" as to be able to have a cultural victory, i definitely cannot be proud with a "Dan Quayle" scoring, while Domniation gave an easiest Cesar with Monarch difficulty on huge map

In normal speed, you need 50.000 (in 3 cities) to reach cultural.
Some keys that could solve this :
- having a government form that gives better than +1/specialist and +10% culture
- a easier access to government that allows unlimited scientific/artist/merchant (as to win cultural you must first go to vice-royalty, it's "far")
- more buildings allowing to make artists
- buildings with +xx% culture instead of just +1/+2/+3 (could be given with some ressources, like it is for taverns/harbors)