For a while when I first started BNW i was thinking that the 3 factories or modern era need for ideologies was really hard on the tall/cultural player. There were times playing tall (3 or 4 cities) when I would be first to industrial, but with no coal around. I even would have CS allies with coal, with a mine on the tile, that wouldn't give me the coal for another 100-200 years!
In my experience (emperor) playing wide, If you are keeping up or ahead on science, being the first to 3 factories is generally wise assuming you have been pushing out enough culture to offset the influence of CV favoring civs that might chose a different ideology. In this case, I try to start stockpiling gold after researching economics, in order to rush buy 1 or 2 of them and hard build one or two in my highest hammer cities.
I decided to test how bad it was to be a tall aesthetics civ and ignore factories and rush for radio. I used my oxford on electricity and slogged slowly to radio. It was painfully slow with my wimpy science output, but I did get to ideologies first.
So, my mind is changed. I think in most cases its best to hope for coal at home, or go settle on it, but in the case of culture players, its a clear shot at radio, which is where all the good stuff for a culture player is anyways. I the test game i mentioned, I managed to get Eiffel, Broadway and 3 broadcast towers up as others were building factories. World's Fair kicked in shortly after and I could finally see the logic in that design choice.