animals spawn at the start of T6!
I suppose that it makes sense from a game design perspective, to first give every Civ a chance to have its Cultural Borders expand and only then populate the map with Barb Animals.
Barb Animals have a high rate of not walking toward a square that is adjacent to Cultural Borders (unless they have nowhere else to move), and they would get ejected by expanding Cultural Borders, so there's a certain logic to it given how Barb Animals work and given how AIs are programmed to settle on Turn 0 in place (although I don't know what happens on such a crowded map where some AIs can't settle in place).
i) Do we know if culture busting works across water,
What you do when you want to see the effects of an AI's Culture-busting, you replace their City with your City and give that City the same amount of Culture. Try it out and you'll see that yes, Culture-busting occurs across of the water. I used our test game and our City at London's location with its first Cultural Border expansion to come up with the diagram.
I tried the 100-Culture Cultural Border expansion for London, but we didn't get any additional spawn-busting of squares in the diagram (there might be more spawn-busting on the coast to our north-east, but we're not yet sure if the real game's coast will match the test game's coast up there yet, so I didn't show as much in the diagram). Basically, don't count on any more useful Culture-busting in the nearby area from England (unless our gambit is wrong and England isn't on an island).
culture itself doesn't spread overseas (we're relying on this to keep the cow tile).
It will spread over water 2 squares deep. It will spread onto other landmasses' land only if those landmasses are within the big fat cross of a City.
If Culture already exists overseas, though, then it seems that Culture can break this rule of not spreading onto other landmasses' land. So, for example, if we had settled in place, had settled City 2 located 2 W of the G Cow, and then temporarily gifted City 2 to England before recapturing it, England's Culture would be able to spread to our side of the water wherever England had owned Culture from having temporarily owned City 2. I make this claim by having played the test game forward with England on our landmass, then having World-Built London's Culture down to 1, making England be on another landmass via the World Builder, only to find London's Culture covering our side of the water once London's Culture had expanded again. For practical purposes, if England is on an island, this fact shouldn't affect us in any way, unless we were to gift England a City on our north coast.
ii) Land-tiles (if not mountains) can spawn animals 3W of southern spawn busting spot (and 3S of 'possible spawn busting location')
I believe that's why Cactus Pete (I think that it was him) suggested putting the Missionary at the southern spawn-busting position, since it is more isolated and also since 2-move Barb Units can't sneak up on our Missionary there (assuming that the square 1 SW of the southern spawn-busting position really is a Peak, and it looks like a Peak to me).
Note that all Barb units, including Barb Animals, also act as spawn-busters, so if a Barb Animal did come toward our southern spawn-buster's location and if it was our Missionary and thus our Missionary had to retreat, at least the Barb Animal would take over most of the spawn-busting for us in that region, depending upon where it ended its turn each turn.
With fog busting no barb unit or city can spawn in an unfogged area, with spawn busting no barb unit can spawn within two tiles of another unit (but cities can if the tile is fogged).
All of that is correct.
Theoretically, one single square that is not unfogged can have a Barb City spawn at it, and I've seen such a thing happen, but the entire landmass needs a large total number of unfogged squares to exist. If Barb Cities already exist, that total number needs to be even higher. With so many AIs in our game, there will already be a small chance of seeing Barb Cities, and for every pre-settled Barb City that exists (one reason for pre-settling AI Cities could be to hide the fact that Barb Cities exist on the map, since there's supposedly a way to tell how many Barb Cities exist prior to the AIs having settled their Cities), the chance of yet another Barb City appearing goes down, since, for another Barb City to appear, there would need to be yet another large amount of unfogged squares out there.
City culture automatically fog-busts 1 tile outside the current culture borders.
For flat land, yes, but there are a couple of extra rules that fit in with the rules of visibility that units have.
Hills, which can be seen two squares away by a unit or by Culture, (and, by extension, Peaks which are two squares away--maybe even three squares away for Peaks--I am not certain) can be Culture-busted simply by having a clear path between a square with our Culture and that Hills/Peak square (i.e. no Forest/Jungle/Hills/Peak blocking the direct view). The GH For that is 2 SW + 1 W of the G Riv Wheat is one such example in the diagram, although that square may not be a Hills square in the real game.
Water also can be "seen across" for two squares, which is why England's Culture is already Culture-busting the G For that is 1 N of the G Stone.
EDIT: To illustrate:
goodjob
