20k victory

I've decided that I would like to try and go for one of these, so I've started, and was hoping someone with some experience with this would tell me how I'm doing so far. Here are the stats for my current game (warlord):

Year 730AD
Total Culture 6224
Carthage 3477 48/turn

Score:
Carthage 338
Egypt 243
Aztecs 225
Persia 217
Greece 216
Zululand 208
Rome 193
America 179

I'm in Monarchy right now, as it was all I had when my Golden Age arrived after poping out the Colossus. I'm currently researching at 40 turns using a single beaker, and working my way up the Metallurgy branch. I have the Great Library, so I haven't worried too much about research yet. Once Education is discovered (probably less than 15 turns from now), I'll need to crank up the research slider, but until then, it's all heading into the nation's coffers.

At my current culture rate, it will take another 345 turns before I hit 20k. I'm hoping to obviously increase that rate as time goes on, but I'm a little worried that it won't be enough.

I decided on the 20k goal 10 turns into the game, so it wasn't planned from the start, but now that I've handed myself a challenge, I'd like to do my best here to rise to the occasion.

The other civs are all annoyed/polite with me, and the only war was the Aztecs jumping the Americans fairly early on, basically leaving them with 5-6 cities, and 8+ techs behind everyone else. Egypt and I have the largest chunk of land grabbed (not bad for building a single settler out of my capital), but much of mine is desert.

I've read Zachriel's superb writeup of his Egypt 20k victory, but lacking the religious trait, I think it will be a tad more difficult.

I'm tempted to stay in Monarchy all game, but if anyone thinks differently, let me know. I like having 3 MP in my capital, which lets me keep the luxury slider at 10% (a single luxury exists in my kingdom, and it was 20 tiles from my capital).

Governement choice:
If you are not planning too much war, I would suggest you to revolt to Republic.
Luxury:
First you have to build market place in much of your cities, then trade luxury with other Civs. You can trade it for Tech or for Gold.
20K goal cultural victory.
I would set up my research to the upper side where the Cultural Great Wonders are (Sistine, Bach's, Shakespeare's, Newton's University) Try to build at least two of them, three would be better. Also build Cathedral, University and Coloseum. You should be fine.

Try to get a productive city in your first ring (around your capitol) and prebuild the Palace to get the wonders you need. If your capitol is your 20k city, you may want to build the FP next to it and move your Palace to another location allowing you to use the Palace as a prebuild option. If you have a tech lead, this will almost guarentee you will get all of the great wonders.

You should go for Republic as soon as possible and use the cash you've collected to rush many of the regular improvements in between your prebuilds.

An alternative style that can be very successful is to use a militaristic civ and go warmongering. Every leader generated can be a wonder in your 20k city. It can be quite interesting battling only to get promotions and leaders rather than taking cities. Just pick off the soft targets all the time and avoid tough ones can get you a steady supply of leaders. Its quite a fun game. I've had 20k cities with 10 or 11 wonders in . Most built by leaders.

Hi theres also another thread on this here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=51460.

Here you can see my 20K city on Regent level.
To generate the leaders is the best way to get wonders.
When you have railroads you can declare war on some civ wait for their units, railroad your arty in, blast them and then attack with the Elite unit (but not Elite*, he has already leader generated) a 1in12 chance is quite good. I also like only to take good land with no corruption. Unless for resources or strategy. A tuned economy is my preference.

Good luck.