(2) Founder Beliefs: It gets a little awkward since most of these require you to spread your religion to get a decent benefit out of these and if you are playing for cultural victory you don't really want to use your faith to spread your religion. While not a huge amount in a longer game this amount can be substantial if you are playing a civ like Greece, Russia, Khmer or Poland that can snag early culture victories. (1) Holy cities themselves generate tourism. However, there are a few benefits to founding a religion that really help you with a cultural victory. There are many synergies between the culture victory and faith generation, but most of those do not require you to found the religion yourself. If you can give us an idea of what civ you are looking to play maybe we can give more specific advice.
