In games where one is going for victories other than culture.

For several months after getting Civ4 BTS I was playing like I always did Civ 3 that is through warmongering. Then I decided to try for a cultural victory. I still had to have my fix via an axe rush, but found that going cultural didn't destroy my option to romp later in the game. And in fact, concentrating on spreading religions out to my border cities for the requisite temples gobbled up my neighbors border lands. In that game, after the big three were in cruise mode, I kept my culture slider at a moderate 30% and went on teching and building and was able to go a conquering with my riflemen. OKAY, that game was on Prince level and normally I'm playing Monarch/Emperor, but I was trying to get the mechanics right

In my most recent Monarch game I decided to go for a Cultural victory as the Egyptian dame. I had to make use of those lovely war chariots, but this time I didn't wipe any one out or keep any of the captured cities, just pinned one opponent and kept the other from settling on prime real estate until I could afford to. I actually chose to make one of my big three a barb city on my border since it had good food and production. I've got 60 turns to go and while there are a couple of guys on my continent who are leading me in techs, I've limited their access to resources by the growth of my cultural boundaries. I've snarfed a couple of cities from one and will probably get a few more by the end of the game.

I know that I used up a bunch of resource generating the culture, but I'm wondering whether strategic use of culture is not actually applicable to games where one is looking for another victory type? Maybe Sistene's is actually an offensive weapon. Maybe a border cathedral is one as well. Does your generic everday civ know how to effectively use culture to protect its borders?

Culture as a weapon for grabbing territory and resource. What do you think?

The AI does a decent job of running artists in border cities to push your borders back on the upper difficulties but it is easy to offset with the tactics you have described; border cathedrals, TSC, etc. Hatty, "the Egyptian Dame", is pretty good at getting culture wins as an AI but in general, I don't think the AI can utilize cultural as an offensive weapon like a human can.

I don't think there are many/any good players out there who just ignore culture in games. The problem with culture as something you can gun for like hammers, commerce, and espioange is that, with the other three to varying degrees, they will almost always be useful at any given time (espionage being a sort of exception, but it rarely if ever is useless if you actively pursue it). Culture? Well, if you're not going for a cultural victory, there are a lot of times when the benefits of striving for culture are pretty minimal.

Other than your border cities, or newly captured cities, having a ton of culture doesn't tend to do you a lot of good. It won't stave off invaders (siege cancels its benefits quickly - though, it does help), it won't give you an offensive army (you MAY capture a few cities with it, but large scale cultural conquest is ridiculously tough), it won't ever get you technology... It just keeps your cities as a big block. It makes your cities a bit harder to hold, but Noble level CPUs don't tend to have huge happiness problems unless you're actively trying to starve them of it. Culture is a valuable commodity, but only situationally - whereas hammers and commerce are useful pretty much all the time, and espionage is a much more versatile offensive weapon.

I'm not suggesting you ignore culture, but, culture doesn't put tech and troops on the table. Keep that in perspective while you're running those artists.