Deau
Emperor
I'm wondering though... Assuming you are not wanting to go for a culture victory, you could just avoid Tradition/Liberty and really early culture building in favor of expanding and/or building a decent amount of economy and military going. (using the hammers from monuments and investing them into works/scouts/settlers) To then kick in the culture a little bit later once Piety/Patronage unlocks?
You would end up with fewer social policies overall obviously (hence why I don't recommend it for Cultural approach to the game) but you could focus more of those SPs into either Patronage if you want to push a tech lead in the mid game, or Piety if you want to hulk smash.
My guess is you'd have to work a little on the timings in the opening but it seems interesting.
Without delayed SPs checked in game selection, it is nearly impossible to get to medieval without at least 2 SPs. That is, at 1CPT from capital, you need to get to medieval before turn 26 (impossible) to not have to waste 1 SP and before turn 71 to not waste 2 SPs.
This implies no monument, no liberty or tradition as the first forced policy, no culture ruin, no barb quest for a cultural CS etc. etc. etc.
The deal though is after you've spent 2 policies in the early trees, there is generally a very, very interesting 3rd or 4rth policy that is worth it like LE/Meritocracy/professionnal army.
It is possible not to do any extra culture from the start for lots of turns but it is generally not a good option because then your cities border expansion becomes soooo slow that you can't catch your luxuries which you could sell. This is also a reason why patronage usually opens up somewhere between the 3rd and the 4rth policy and not after the 2nd given you didn't friend/ally a cultural CS too early.
Last but not least, delaying early culture buildings by say 50 turns may feel like you will have many fewer SPs but it is really not the case. 50 turns of say 2 monuments is only 200 total culture. Sure this is enough to get your first 3 policies if you only have 2 cities but onceyou have 4-5 policies open, this turns to be less than the cost of the 6th policy. In other words, it would only turn you into trailling one SP. This is due to the exponential increase in cost.
Anyway the above example of culture building delaying is one of the reasons why early monument building is often overestimated. If your base border growth is fast enough to pump luxuries/resources out at your worker's working speed, there is hardly a real need for the monument (exception made to get the worker few turns earlier from citizenship or to get the meritocracy GP few turns earlier etc. to fit in a tightly timed opening strategy)
A good example is the resourceless domination strategy I've been throwing here and there in various threads. Since it uses honor->PA opener for pikes->upgrades rifles, you don't get any immediate benefits from your first 4 SPs all the way until you start upgrading your units. As such, for so long as my border growth is enough for my needs, I don't waste any precious hammers/gpt for culture buildings. I just then turn into more culture buildings/CSs once my rush is fielded/have hammers and gold to spare to help catch scholasticism nearly as fast as I would've with earlier culture approach