I play Cultris through Wine too and it works great. I get better performance with Wine than with Windows. I was on Ubuntu before switching to Arch Linux.
FPS are stuck to 63 FPS (VSync ?) in menus and 125 in game.
For those who encounter poor performance on Linux, check that the proprietary driver is installed for your graphic card (unless you're a Linus Torvalds guy and you have to use OSS or you will die).
You can also try to disable advanced desktop features like the desktop composition (Compiz for example).
On Ubuntu, I don't know why, but for a moment, I experienced a lag when the sound was activated under the settings of Cultris. Disabling the sound was the solution ... That was a while ago.
Distribution: Arch Linux
Desktop Environment: XFCE
CPU: Core 2 Duo T7700 (2.4GHz)
RAM: 4 Gb DDR2
Graphic Card: NVidia Quadro FX 1600M (512 Mb)
Driver: Proprietary (NVIDIA Driver Version 290.10)
Wine: 1.3.35