There's still a lot that's pretty vague about just what the culling rules are to me. But as far as I can tell regarding the new system, what they've done is essentially allow you to create a 'safe pool' that will always be immune to culling. The poorly explained "Max Sims" number is the maximum number of Sims you can add to the 'safe pool.' It has nothing to do with the maximum number of Sims you can have before culling is triggered, as far as I can tell.
This is all just my own understanding of the new system so far, which may be flawed.
