Ok, so after a long hietas, I'm playing galciv again, slowly ratcheting up the difficulty.  Last game, however, I decided to mix things up and, rather than go for my accustomed alliance victory, try for a cultural.  However, things did not go smoothly.  As it turned out, I rapidly maxed out my number of starbases taking up space in 'unclaimed' sectors to increase my influence sphere, and was unable to start focusing on the more challenging influence areas without sacrificing these free gains (yes, by this point I did have max-level logistics).  Then, just when I had decided that all I could do was try to culture-flip other civs' border worlds to expand my sphere of influence, and began to do so, I got the event that accuses your culture of 'culturally attacking' their neighbors, or some such, and causes all native influence to increase.  This knocked my total % of galactic influence down about 8%, to 27%, at which point I threw up my hands and went for a tech victory.  This game was on 'challenging', large galaxy, standard frequency/star/etc. settings, btw.  Can anyone give me some solid basic strats on how to run a culture game?  Because, apparently, I have an inadequate understanding of the mechanics involved =/.