Civilization 6 Culture Victory explained - how to earn Foreign Tourists, Domestic Tourists, and Tourism in Civ 6

Publish date: 2022-06-06

The Civilization 6 Culture Victory is not a simple one. At least not on the surface. There's been a great deal of confusion how exactly it works right from the get go with Civ 6 - in fact even with Civ 5 it was something developer Firaxis had to wrestle with.

Thanks to some good old fashioned mathematics from the community however, there is now, at last, enough information to put together a proper guide on how to win the Culture Victory, how to earn Foreign and Domestic Tourists, plus explaining how Tourism works, and how Culture affects it.

We've assembled this guide based on a combination of in-game info, our own testing, and conversations we've held with Firaxis confirming some of the details. It's also worth noting the work done by the community, particularly CivFanatics forum user Victoria, found here. You can also find any of the formula mentioned in the game's .exe files - although we recommend you don't go fiddling around in there unless you know what you're doing!

Civilization 6 Interview - 18 minutes with lead designer, Ed Beach (plus some new gameplay)

If you're looking for more resource-focused Civ 6 guides, meanwhile, we also have pages on how to earn Gold, how to earn Faith, and how to earn Science in Civ 6, too.

A quick note: we've refreshed out Civ 6 guides for the game's launch on Nintendo Switch, but just be aware that they contain information regarding the Rise and Fall DLC as well as the base game, which means some things only apply if you have that DLC! Otherwise... crack on!

How does Culture Work and how do you earn a Culture Victory?

First things first, here's the exact definition of a Civ 6 Culture Victory:

With that in mind, we need to know how to earn Foreign Tourists, but also how to earn Domestic Tourists - both so we can stop other Civs from earning them and make our lives easier, and so we can 'defend' against other Civs going for the Culture Victory with a large amount of Domestic Tourists of our own. How do we do that? We'll dive into the specifics further down, but for now all you need to know is you do it by earning Culture.

Culture, as you'll probably know, is the pink stuff. Indicated with a pink/purple musical symbol (a Treble clef, as it's known), Culture works much the same as Science: there's a gauge tracking how much you're earning per turn in the top left corner of the screen, a series of buildings, Great People, and modifiers which help you earn it; and there's now a new Civics tree, which works just like Science's Tech tree, that unlocks Civics as you earn Culture and progress through the game. We've summarised them below, but skip ahead past that big list if it's Tourism you're after!

List of ways to earn Culture:

Culture SourceTypeCultural Effect
Theatre SquareDistrict+1 Culture for each adjacent Wonder. +0.5 Culture for each adjacent District. Specialists grant +2 Culture each.
AmphitheaterTheatre Square Building+2 Culture
Archaeological MuseumTheatre Square Building+2 Culture
Art MuseumTheatre Square Building+2 Culture
Broadcast CenterTheatre Square Building+4 Culture
AmberLuxury Resources+1 Culture
CoffeeLuxury Resources+1 Culture
JadeLuxury Resources+1 Culture
MarbleLuxury Resources+1 Culture
SilkLuxury Resources+1 Culture, +1 Culture with Plantation and Oral Tradition
CottonLuxury Resources+1 Culture with Plantation and Oral Tradition
DyesLuxury Resources+1 Culture with Plantation and Oral Tradition
SpicesLuxury Resources+1 Culture with Plantation and Oral Tradition
SugarLuxury Resources+1 Culture with Plantation and Oral Tradition
CitrusLuxury Resources+1 Culture with Plantation and Oral Tradition
God of the Open SkyBeliefs / Pantheons+1 Culture from Pastures
Oral TraditionBeliefs / Pantheons+1 Culture from Banana, Citrus, Cotton, Dyes, Silk, Spices, and Sugar Plantations
Lay MinistryBeliefs / Pantheons+1 Culture from each Theatre Square distric in cities following this Religion
World ChurchBeliefs / Pantheons+1 Culture for every 5 followers of the Religion in other Civs
Choral MusicBeliefs / PantheonsShrines and Temples provide Culture equal to their intrinsic Faith output.
MeritocracyPolicies+1 Culture for each speciality district constructed
Trade ConfederationPolicies+1 Culture from international Trade Routes
RajPolicies+2 Culture from each City-State you are Suzerain of
Grand OperaPolicies+100% Culture from Theatre Square builings
Market EconomyPolicies+2 Culture from international Trade Routes for each strategic resource improved at the destination Civ
Collective ActivismPolicies+10% Culture per City-State you are Suzerain of.
BroadwayWonders+20% Culture in the city where it is constructed
Chichen ItzaWonders+2 Culture for all Rainforest tiles in this city
ColosseumWonders+2 Culture for all City Centers within 6 miles
Cristo RedentorWonders+4 Culture
Estadio do MaracanãWonders+6 Culture in each city of your civ.
Forbidden CityWonders+5 Culture
Great PyramidsWonders+2 Culture
OracleWonders+1 Culture
Potala PalaceWonders+2 Culture
Sydney Opera HouseWonders+8 Culture
St. Basil's CathedralWonders+1 Cultra from all Tundra tiles for this city
Cliffs of DoverNatural Wonders+3 Culture on wonder tiles.
Dead SeaNatural Wonders+2 Culture on wonder tiles.
EyjafjallajökullNatural Wonders+1 Culture on adjacent land tiles.
Hạ Long BayNatural Wonders+1 Culture on wonder tiles.
Lake RetbbaNatural Wonders+2 Culture on wonder tiles.
MatterhornNatural Wonders+1 Culture to adjacent tiles
PantanalNatural Wonders+2 Culture on wonder tiles
PiopiotahiNatural Wonders+1 Culture to adjacent tiles
Tsingy de BemarahaNatural Wonders+1 Culture to adjacent tiles
UluruNatural Wonders+2 Culture to adjacent tiles
Film StudioBuilding+4 Culture (America)
Great WallBuilding+1 Culture for each adjacent Great Wall (China, requires Castles)
SphinxBuilding+1 Culture (Egypt)
ChateauBuilding+2 Culture, +2 Culture if adjacent to a Wonder (France)
Electronics FactoryBuilding+4 Culture after researching Electricity Tech (Japan)
ZigguratTile Improvement+1 Culture if adjacent to a river, +1 Culture with Natural History (Sumeria)
AcropolisDistrictReplaces Theatre Square.+1 Culture from each adjacent Wonder, +1 Culture from each adjacent District, +2 Culture from specialists, +2 Culture if adjacent to City Centre (Greece)
GorgoLeader BonusAwards Culture equal to 50% of Combat Strength of defeated units.
PericlesLeader Bonus+5% Culture for each City-State you're Suzerain of.
PeterLeader Bonus+1 Culture for Trade Routes for every 3 Civics the destination Civ is ahead of you.
SaladinLeader Bonus+10% Culture from worship buildings.
JadwigaLeader BonusRelics provide +2 Culture.
SeondeokLeader Bonus+10% Culture from all cities with an established Governor.
WilhelminaLeader Bonus+1 Culture from Trade Routes to foreign cities.
Great Work of MusicGreat Works+4 Culture each
Great Work of WritingGreat Works+4 Culture each
Great Work of ArtGreat Work+3 Culture each, doubled when themed
ArtifactGreat Works+3 Culture each, doubled when themed

Alright, so we know how to earn Culture, but how does that impact on Domestic and Foreign Tourism, seeing as it's those that we need to win?

How Domestic Tourists and Culture work in Civilization 6

Now that we know what's needed to win a Culture Victory - more visiting Foreign Tourists than any other Civ's own Domestic Tourists - it's time to dive a little deeper, starting with Domestic Tourists and Tourism.

Domestic Tourists are your means of defending against another Civ winning the Culture Victory - the more you have, the more Foreign Tourists another Civ must earn to win - so it's important to know how Domestic Tourism works - not to mention the fact it also allows you to target other Civs' sources of Domestic Tourism to make your Culture Victory easier, too.

You can view the Domestic Tourists of a given Civ by looking at the Culture Victory panel from the Victory screen found in the top right. Domestic Tourists for a Civ are indicated by the number under their Civ's name, next to the colour-corresponding suitcase. Frustratingly hidden, until uncovered from the game's files by the community (which we've since checked with Firaxis), here's how to find it:

Domestic Tourism formula:

To clarify those terms a little, the Total Culture is the total amount you've accrued over the course of your game, whilst Total Civic Inspiration Culture is the total amount of Culture you've earned through the Inspiration boosts to your Civic Tree progress.

You don't actually need to know the specific figures for either of those elements (you can work them out if you really need to, by totalling up all the Culture costs of boosted Civics, found in the Civic Tree - Inspirations unlock 50% (or 60% for China) of a Civic's required Culture - and then working backwards for your Total Culture). Basically, the two of them together make your 'real' total Culture as Inspirations are basically free Culture towards unlocking a specific Civic), and so Domestic Tourism is basically all the Culture you've earned, divided by 100.

What this helps you with though is knowing that, if you want to stop other Civs from accruing a large amount of Domestic Tourists themselves, you need to hit their Culture income and, if possible, prevent them from unlocking too many Civic Inspiration boosts. Likewise, if you want to guard against another Civ winning the Culture Victory, you need to generate large amounts of Culture and unlock large numbers of Civic Inspiration boosts yourself.

How Foreign Tourists, Tourism, and Culture work in Civilization 6

Here's where things get a little more complicated - but also much more interesting.

Winning the Culture Victory, as we know, is all about earning large numbers of visiting Foreign Tourists - but how do you earn Foreign Tourists, and how do the figures found in game for your Tourism and Culture factor into that?

What we already know is that the number of Foreign Tourists visiting from a given Civ is shown as the number next to the brown suitcase in the Culture Victory panel, in the row of that Civ (image on the right makes this a little clearer). All the numbers in that column totalled up, then, makes your total Foreign Tourists, and you can see how close you are to your target in the number in the top right of that panel.

Your goal, then, is to increase your visiting Foreign Tourists to the point where you have that required amount for victory (in the image, I have 247 out of the required 350 Foreign Tourists). How do we do that? Well, Foreign Tourists are best explained with an analogy.

Foreign Tourists work a lot like Great People: each turn you earn a certain amount of Great People Points. When you hit a certain threshold, say 1,000 Great People Points, you'll earn a Great Person. You want to earn lots of Great People over the course of a game. Foreign Tourists work in the same way except the problem is that threshold, unlike the one for Great People, is hidden, so up until now it's been very hard to see how you can earn Foreign Tourists and gauge how well you're doing at earning them in your game.

Now however, we know that the further past the hidden Total Tourism Threshold our Tourism from a Civ is, the more Foreign Tourists that Civ sends. Again, following some checks with Firaxis and tests of our own, we also now know the exact formula for figuring out that the Threshold, which in fact depends on how many civilizations there are in the game.

Hidden Total Tourism Threshold formula:

Foreign Tourists formula:

Let's define those terms again one more time for some clarity:

Time for an example! This should hopefully clarify any residual confusion here, as it definitely took us a little time to get our heads around:

In this particular game, I'm playing as America. There are eight Civilizations in the game, including me, and one of the foreign Civs is Greece. Let's do the sums with the figures from that game:

So in this game of 8 Civs, for every 1,200 Total Lifetime Tourism I get from Greece, I get one Tourist. I've earned 45 Tourists so far (note that the figures for Foreign Tourists are always rounded down to the nearest whole number), and can figure out that I'll need to hit 55,200 Liftime Tourism from Greece to earn another Foreign Tourism from that Civ.

Okay, so I've got to earn a lot of Tourism from Greece then if I want to hit my Total Foreign Tourists target of 350 (again, see top right of image). Fortunately, they're just one of the eight Civs in the game. But how do I find out how much Tourism-per-turn I'm earning from a Civ, and how can I earn more, faster, to get those precious Foreign Tourists?

Well, Tourism-per-turn from a given Civ comes from two things:

Tourist Attractions are unfortunately not listed in full anywhere in-game. You can use the Tourism Map Lens and hover over each bubble to get a bit of an idea, but this is cumbersome. We list them in full below for you to try and clear this up.

Tourism Modifiers, again, are hard to find in full in-game. You can see some of them in hover-over menus of the Tourism Map Lens, and others hovering over the browns suitcases in the Culture Victory panel. As with Attractions, we list these in full in the next section.

Tourism-per-turn, from an individual Civ, is available to view in-game but somewhat obscured. It's the number just above Lifetime Tourism, which is also shown from hovering over a Civ's brown suitcase in the Culture Victory panel. This is shown as "Tourism (current)" in-game, but represents how much you get each turn from that Civ.

Importantly, this is not the figure shown at the top of your screen, which is described as "Tourism per turn" in-game. That number is your raw, pre-modifier Tourism-per-turn calculated before any of the game's various Tourism Modifiers are applied, and so can be confusing - you could increase that number at the top of your screen, for instance, but have negative modifiers that actually mean you're still earning fewer Tourists-per-turn from each Civ.

Going back to the example game then, at 428 Tourism-per-turn then (see the same image above), I'll get another Foreign Tourist from Greece in three turns.

Tourist Attractions, Tourism Modifiers, and how to earn Foreign Tourists in Civilization 6

Finally, we can get down to a bit of strategy!

We now know that to win the game we need lots of Foreign Tourists. To get Foreign Tourists, we need lots of Tourism-per-turn, and to get lots of Tourism-per-turn, we need Tourist Attractions and Tourism Modifiers. With that in mind, here's the important stuff:

List of ways to earn Tourism:

On top of these there are Modifiers. Modifiers multiply the Tourism-per-turn earned from certain Tourism Attractions by a percentage. A quick note on Religious Tourism - anything marked "Tourism-per-turn (Religious)" below is a Modifier which only affects sources of Religious Tourism. These are Holy Cities and Relics, which are also marked in the list above with (Religious) so you know what's affected. Another note: not all Modifiers are shown in-game. There's no indication, for example, that a 75% boost to Tourism from Trade Routes is actually the 25% standard, plus the 50% from Online Communities; likewise, Leader or Civ-specific bonuses, like that of the Film Studio, are only shown in the Tourism Lens after hovering over a district. Basically, it's easier to use the list below if you want to get an idea of what's causing a boost to what:

List of Tourism Modifiers:

The Differing Governments modifier requires another list of its own, thanks to the fact that each Government type (Oligarchy, Fascism, etc.) has a hidden number of its own that factors in to how much of a negative modifier you'll get for a differing Government.

Here's how to work it out, followed by a list of Governments and their hidden numbers, for finding out how much of a negative impact having different Governments will give you:

Different Government Modifier Formula and stats:

So for example, if I were a Democracy and another Civ was Fascist, that would be (-5 + -6) x 3 = -24% Tourism-per-turn. So I'm losing almost a quarter of my Tourism-per-turn from that Fascist Civ because of our Government types!

If your lust for Civilization 6 knowledge is still going strong, expansion owners should take a look at our Civ 6 Rise and Fall guide hub which takes you through the basics of everything new, whilst we have dedicated pages on Governors and Loyalty, along with how to earn Golden Ages, Era Points and Era Score through Historic Moments, and a full list of new Civs in Civ 6 Rise and Fall and other DLC. Otherwise, our Civilization 6 guide, tips and tricks covers the essentials before you master early game, mid-game and late-game strategies. We also have tips on the new Districts feature, a Leaders list with their Traits and Agendas, plus the best ways to get Gold, Science, and Faith, how to win by Religious Victory, and how to earn the elusive Science Victory and Military domination victory. Finally, here's the Culture Victory, Foreign Tourism, and Domestic Tourism explained in depth.

The best way to earn a Culture Victory in Civilization 6

To conclude all of this, then, here's a nice summary of our advice for earning yourself a Culture Victory:

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