1. Do standard growth/science tech beeline to civil service / education. Avoid the top and bottom parts of the tree until after you have education, exception being bronze working to reveal iron / chop jungles and sailing for the easy trade route. Avoid optics as well unless you have a coastal city with at least 2 resources, again until after education.
2. Take advantage of science from trade routes if you're spawned near other civs. Get sailing and engineering asap and build markets in your bordering cities asap, this will entice trade from other civs.
3. Delay filling out your guild slots until you're a) working all your food tiles and b) working all your science specialists. The nature of great people accumulation is that your GPP's are worth the most at first and less and less over time, as each successive great work only gets you 2 tourism but costs you +100 gpp than the last one. Also, your theming bonuses will be easier to fill out if you start getting most of your great artists and musicians in the industrial age anyhow.
4. After you beeline education go STRAIGHT into acoustics so you can get the flat 10% beakers rationalism and then secularism shortly after. You're going culture after all so you will get a policy every 10 turns or so.
5. If you prioritize growth and beakers properly getting national college in the 80s and universities in the 110s, you WILL start to pull ahead in tech by the 130s or so. Then provided that you prioritize the mandatory wonders, you will have a great chance of being able to hard build them. Oracle, sistine chapel, uffizi, and broadway are relatively easy to get. Pisa and globe theater are much harder to get. Forget about great library and parthenon if you're playing higher diffculties.
