What are your principal guidelines? One big science city? What are you beelining for? Are you choosing fixed opponents? When do you switch civics? Which wonders are you going for?
Well, here is what I do. I play either Peter or Gandhi on GPlains. I pick 2 opponents, usually Fred and Liz, but I have nothing special in mind, just some non-aggressive leaders.
Regenerate the map until I have a starting location in the woods with at least two special food resources and plenty of forests. Furs are good, too, for happiness and some early commerce.
Queue 3 Warriors while working a tile with max hammers (like 1F2H or 3H.) Research Pottery -> Writing -> Alphabet. Once 3 Warriors are ready, capture the closest AI capital. Set both cities to build Workers, unless I have popped one from a goody hut, then send it to the capital, and set the capital to build Granary.
By this time Alpha is ready, so trade for whatever I can from the second AI. Hopefully they have BW, otherwise, spend 2 turns on researching it myself, and switch to Slavery immediately. So, for the first two or three cities the build order is Worker -> Granary -> Warrior -> Library.
Granaries are whipped at size 2 (for Peter) or 4 (for Gandhi.) Then max food for fastest growth until size 6, switch to Settler, wait a turn, whip for 3 pop, apply overflow to a Worker, rinse, repeat until I have at least 4 good cities with decent food, so I can whip Libraries, and also hook up Stone for Pyramids if there is one in sight, for which I may need 5-th or 6-th city. Also, I build an army of Workers, like 2-4 per city.
I try to avoid chopping forests in the capital's fat cross, I only chop if absolutely necessary to chain irrigate farms.
Meanwhile tech to Col->Monotheism->CS. Switch to Bureaucracy, Caste System, and Org. Rel. Adopt a state religion as well and spread it to all the cities. Now run max scientists instead of working unimproved tiles in every city. Some of them may not yet finish a Library, but that's fine, they can keep building working mines.
Start Pyramids in the capital (no Great Library in this case), if I don't have Stone. If I do, start it in the second best production city, research Aesthetics->Literature, and start GL in the capital. If no stone, both techs and the GL can be skipped.
Meanwhile use GSs to bulb (after building the Academy in the capital) Philosophy and Education (possibly, Paper, too.), and research Calendar->Optics->Astronomy myself. Sometimes I use Oracle for Astronomy.
Once Education is ready, start to build at least 4 Universities immediately. Max hammers rather than specialists for that. After Pyramids is complete, switch to Representation and Pacifism. Then build Oxford, which in my case is usually complete around 1AD.
At that point I usually build that Mausoleum (for +50% Golden Age.)
After Astronomy research all the way up to Chemistry, and, if my best non-capital production city is ready, Steel for Ironworks. Then SM -> Biology. Of course, SM can be bulbed with a GS. Likewise, Physics. The general rule of bulbing: if you can bulb something you need shortly, bulb it. Otherwise, settle as SS.
After SM, I send all my Workers to build Forest Preserves around the Capital, and after Biology, I set the capital to build that National Park. 6-10 free specialists in the Oxford city are great.
After that I build the Palace in the Ironworks city.
Now research Superconductor for labs and Rocketry for Apollo. Grab Nationalism along the way for Tadj. I like to trigger a Golden Age while building Apollo.
Then Steam Power (for Coal) -> Industrialism. No Aluminum, spend a GS on Aluminum Corp, then spread it to all the production centers. After Assembly Line, all my cities are usually building something, while the Capital generates science.
Now Composites for Casings, and then everything else. 3-4 Golden Ages non-stop also help.