If you try to use the same formula every game, you're gonna have a bad time. Being balanced is not necessarily the best strategy since every civ and map is so different. For example if you are not a religious civ then most likely you'd be better off skipping the holy sites. If you are playing as Alex or have the Aztecs next to you then an encampment is a great idea, but those can be skipped too quite often. If you come across a perfect spot surrounded by mountains, it would be foolish to build anything besides a campus. Etc. Etc.
I also disagree with the previous poster about theaters, those are important and do provide a lot of culture. Speeding through the civic tree helps all victory types.