It is fascinating how the AI sometimes just refuses to turn on the culture slider, even when a simple comparison would show turns remaining to go legendary being less than turns needed to research remaining space ship techs plus travel time. I guess the AI has long since chosen its intended victory condition, and just sticks to plan even if conditions have changed? But sometimes an AI will change approach, so there must be some mechanism or condition that can trigger a reassessment of the victory plan.
Obviously estimating how long each possible victory condition might take is complex, especially with possible changes to city tile and specialist assignments, civic changes, rival civ threats, etc. I can understand the AI developers not wanting to spend the cycles to recalculate all that every turn. Plus there is a risk of having the AI go schizophrenic and jump back and forth between goals too much, and end up being ineffective at all of them. But when a simple eyeball of the top three cities' "Turns to go Legenday" counters shows they are approximately equal to remaining space ship techs plus travel time WITHOUT the slider, not turning on the culture slider looks pretty stupid.
Obviously estimating how long each possible victory condition might take is complex, especially with possible changes to city tile and specialist assignments, civic changes, rival civ threats, etc. I can understand the AI developers not wanting to spend the cycles to recalculate all that every turn. Plus there is a risk of having the AI go schizophrenic and jump back and forth between goals too much, and end up being ineffective at all of them. But when a simple eyeball of the top three cities' "Turns to go Legenday" counters shows they are approximately equal to remaining space ship techs plus travel time WITHOUT the slider, not turning on the culture slider looks pretty stupid.