I've considered this closer after reading Joe's post explaining it and I believe he is very correct in his analysis and reverting my opinion if as Joe says it indeed works with Realistic Culture, at least as long as even on Eternal speeds the Culture needed for that new first Culture Level doesn't go beyond 20-30 Culture.
The first city you get you don't need an extra building to increase Culture yield really as you have +2 culture from your palace and +1 from your Native Culture (Asian, European, a.s.o).
((Speaking of those, should there be 2, a "Native Culture (Asian)" as well as a "(Culture) Asian"?))
So +3 (or 4) per turn in the non-eternity speeds should not take many turns to reach 10 or 15 culture, and adding a building to build will NOT speed that up anyway unless it takes less than 3 turns to build it.
The other cities you get will be after you have Tribalism, and they all also have the native culture bonus, and by then there are lots and lots of +culture buildings available if so needed as well as Story Tellers and animals.
@DH, I find the Citizen's +1 hammer better in the starting game than that detective, faster building ftw, until hammer production is up later in the game.
@T-Brd: The Great Bath of Mohenjo-daro would be a problem, but like you said you could teach the AI to bring units to pop that first ring, and maybe only needing to do that if they have the great bath.
Otherwise teaching them to plant new cities where they already have gained cultural influence will negate that problem. The AI already knows to sometimes plant cities 3 plots from each other, and then you can use already gained cultural plots even if not getting any from the newly planted city right away.
Cheers
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