@Zholef I don't want people to delete kmod from their hard drives. I very much appreciate KMOD. Civ V is horrible and they're obviously done improving civ IV so I'm excited there is a modder still working to improve the game that I love.
I may be extremely critical and harsh, but it's not personal and it's not because I think it sucks. It's because I want it to get better. I'm currently one of the few people that plays it on the higher levels and I want to give feedback and defend it and then I can better encourage other players to switch to it.
@KMOD Thanks for replying! I understand that you want to make building culture important -- but as Zholef points out, there are still limits to what gamestyle you have to play to win on the higher levels. I realize that you consider more than just deity players when you design the game, but also realize that as a deity player, I don't

I like to be challenged and I like to play at the hardest level and that's why I like KMOD, because it makes it harder. I know that I can beat deity KMOD so I'm going to want to keep playing it for the challenge rather than move to emperor, where I'd just be upset if I didn't win, rather than glad that I did win.
There's a lot of buildings I just can't build and expect to keep up militarily/technologically with the AIs and most of these are what you'd need to not get destroyed in culture. And I'm ok with being punished with culture -- I just feel as if since there's no longer a relatively affordable solution to secure some culture in crucial areas the result is I'm just not going to try for it at all, and end up having to settle on strategic resources. If you don't want to change this in some way that's fine, but it means I'm going to have less decisions to make rather than more.
As for city flipping: I understand you want to be able to expand your empire culturally, and if it meant keeping 5 troops in the city would stop it then cities would never flip along borders. But this is a different situation than conquering enemy cities militarily -- both in gameplay and realistically. There's a difference between say the USA taking Texas (although there was a war) because they ended up settling it and outnumbering mexicans substantially -- and say gaining a city because you burned most of it to the ground, enslaved / converted / displaced the people living there. If a city revolted against a military oppressor, the result would be a battle, that a strong military oppressor would obviously win -- not "well city might autoflip to the defender". I'm not saying the new city should be a utopia -- I'm saying it's possible to conquer someone and actually expect to gain something out of it long-term.
There are ways to differentiate between military expansion revolt risk and cultural border flipping cities.
1. Having a city decrease revolt risk against civ X when civ X conquers it militarily.
2. Having city go through huge population decrease and/or unhappiness increase when conquered.
3. Add a building modifier that reduces revolt risk 75% that comes late enough that it won't affect early game culture struggles but early enough so that there's still time to build it in a late (say cuir) push.
4. Remove (or significantly decrease) vassal states culturally pressuring their overlords.
5. Allow culture in tiles to decay quickly when they're not currently being added to (or are being added to less).
6. Maybe even have something equivalent to "give up revolt risk in conquered cities" as part of a peace deal possibility.
There's also the GG option / IMP trait buffing being discussed, which could be done but definitely wouldn't solve the issue on their own. (Since you will rarely have IMP trait, and if the GG promo only subtracts a percentage down, it will still cost a lot of troops PLUS a general to crush revolt in just 1 city).
And offtopic, but I think it's a big, big impetus to higher level players playing KMOD -- desperately need some sort of AI can't DOW before turn X and maybe second AI can't declare war against player already at war until turn Y.
I understand you feel it's unrealistic for the AI to not use it's early giant archer advantage against the player, but it's unrealistic for them to have an early giant archer advantage to begin with. They have it to prevent good players from cheesing AIs out of the game super early on, not to go on offense themselves.
And I don't like the response to "just not play deity again" because as I said it's still beatable and I still want the challenge. It's just kinda silly when that challenge involves an impossible archer/chariot rush. But it will only do that say 30% of the time. It doesn't add to the overall challenge so much as makes you restart the game immediately 30% of the time because of a bad dice roll.