SSV covers the most thorough skills of CIV 4, including peaceful expansion, warring, and big empire development skills. This guide is for players who want to achieve the fastest spaceship victory. It aims to take advantage of all available resources in the game. The effort needed to play the game is not light.
As different settings might affect the strategies. Therefore, it's not surprising that you could find better ways here and there in your experience. To sum up, I will be talking about default setting (non-isolated or semi-isolated, standard size map, Normal/Epic) as that's most players are doing, and it's more feasible for the difficulty level from Monarch to Immortal. If you have interest in more specific examples, I played BOTM29 (Immortal 1650AD), SGOTM12 (Plastics Ducks, Emperor 1755AD), and BOTM37 (Monarch 1605AD) for SSV.
The most important factor for SSV is the beaker output or commerce, which can only come from citizens and trade routes. Therefore the core idea of the strategies is to found an empire as big as possible.
Part I Opening -- Setup your empire peacefully
The goal in this stage is to grab all available good sites nearby peacefully as fast as possible and still able to learn Education and hence build Oxford University (OU) in time. This is usually achievable ~500AD. In general, it's easier to research Edu ~1AD and your cities are not big enough to whip the universities. This is common since founding cities has higher priority and usually you also want Forge before University. The solution is putting your science slider to 0% till you complete OU.
1. REXing
Land is power, this applies to every difficulty level, including deity, although in higher levels, the barbarians, AIs, and maintenance are going to pose more challenge to do so. All cities will contribute to your empire positively when they are mature, but this takes time and generally they are eating your commerce before mature although they add production. However, there are exceptions where you want to grab the sites as soon as possible:
Great LightHouse (GLH) -- If you can spot 5+ coastal sites and see a reasonable chance of grabbing it. Don't hesitate, try all your effort for it. Depending on the available foreign trade routes and islands (hence intercontinental domestic trade routes), GLH lets your coastal cities up to 10 become profitable from beginning on commerce.
2nd and 3rd city -- If you settle your 2nd city close and connected to your capital, it could be a gain in commercial (2 C from trade route and 1C from city center at least plus the possible yield from 1st citizen) even in deity. So do have a plan to settle your 2nd city as soon as possible when safe, this usually won't be a problem in immortal and below.
Sites with early commercial resources (Gold/Gem/Silver/Fur) especially in the 1st ring -- City with those resources will start to add income to empire after it grow to size 2~3 in 5~10 turns (depend on available food resources). Another important benefit of early commercial resources is that they each provide an extra happiness, which is quite important before you have Monarchy or Pyramids (mids).
After you learn Currency and CoL, except the threat of coming war, there's nothing else to stop you from expansion.
There has been long-time debating of farm vs cottage, I don't want to involve too much into this issue. From my experience, you usually want to cottage your capital for OU and better to farm most of your other cities for faster expansion, faster infrastructures, and faster war preparation through the whipping.
Another thing that deserves of mentioning is that the number of workers needed, I rarely use more than 1 worker per city in any stage. In some types of maps, especially when in the case of getting GLH, I can live with merely 2 workers until up to 8~10 cities. You only need your workers to improve up to 3 tiles in most cases since you would want to whip at size 4 for granary, LH, and finally 2 pop whip of a worker!
Of course, there are also exceptions that you want to go for an early rush when there are warmongers nearby and some cities are just close and too great to be skipped. The goal is the same, you want a solid big empire with OU as early as possible.
2. Wonders
Most wonders are beneficial commercial wise to support the REXing without sinking your economy too much. On the other hand, they slow down the REXing pace. The timing and balance between REXing and wonder building is highly skillful. The basic idea is try to grab the critical wonders as fast and hence as safe as possible, and as slow and also as safe as possible to enable reasonable REXing. One of my criteria of measuring the value of a wonder is the hammer commerce/beaker ratio. For example, if you take CoL as free tech from Oracle (Normal Speed, Emperor level, without Marble), then the value of the Oracle is 546/1.2/150 = 3 beakers/hammer in the 1st glance. With a deeper thought, there are much more, the possible free border pop and happiness from religion, and the possible techs from trade, the actual value of Oracle will be easily more than 10 beakers/hammer. If you want to have a better idea of converting hammer to commerce/beaker, think about building wealth/research, that 1:1 ratio. Here's a list of wonders which are worthy in certain situation.
GLH -- The most powerful wonder in certain map as mentioned above. The only thing you want to produce is settler afterward.
The Colossus -- Another powerful wonder and very very powerful with financial leaders. It definitely worth of delaying Astronomy as late as possible.
Oracle -- The most steadily beneficial wonder in all kinds of map. Depending on the leader trait and in game situation, the choice could be Code of Law (CoL), Metal Casting (MC), Currency, and even Civil Service(CS).
The Great Library (TGL) -- With Marble, it's a great wonder. I'd usually build it in capital and immediately build National Epic. They together will generate 18 (Great people point) GPP per turn. In most of the games I have played, this is how I setup my initial GP farm.
Mids -- Without Stone, I won't consider it. Even with stone, it's a mediocre wonder. The most important reason is that mids is too expensive. Even with stone, 250 hammers are huge investment early on. Another reason is that Hereditary Rule (HR) is also a very good civic, especially when you want to whip heavily, and in most cases, you do.
Temple of Artemis (ToA) -- With marble, this wonder is quite powerful if you have a strong productive capital to build it early enough, with NE, it could contribute ~1000 GPs before it is obsolete.
MoM -- You definitely need it, but it's better to let AI build it for you. Since most or all of your GAs will be launched in late stage of your game, you should be able to capture it in time.
3. Great persons (GP)
You want 1 GS for academy in your capital. Other than that, any other type of GP is good, you can either settle it (GPriest, GM, GS, GE), or bulb it ( 1 GS for Edu, or more if you are pressed by other AIs for liberalism race), or save it for Corporation (GE) and GAs ( GArtist). Since you will be able to run at least 4~6 GAs (1 from Taj, not count event triggering GAs), so even GArtists have their non-negligible usage. In conclusion, capital with wonders is the only GP farm in this stage and before Biology and food corporation.
4. Civic
Hereditary Rule(HR) + Bureaucracy + Slavery + Organized Religion (OR) combo is the most common choice in this stage.
Representation is not very beneficial in early stage since most of your cities will be busy in pumping settlers/workers and whipping infrastructures like granaries, light houses, libraries, and etc. So there's really little room for running specialists to take the advantage of Representation, this is one of the reason why I said that mids are mediocre wonder even with stone. HR and slavery combo is so powerful for you to whip crazy for fastest REXing.
5. Diplomacy
Unless your neighbor's capital is so close and juicy, generally you want to maintein peace with AIs for peaceful expansion. There are ways of pleasing AIs like sharing religion and favorite civic, trading techs, open borders, providing resources, and etc. One of the trick that deserved mentioning is gifting a junk city -- this is the earliest available way (before Alphabet) to bump your neighbor to be pleased to you, sometime it's easier and cheaper than defending.
6. Tech Path
As I said in the beginning, learning Education and building Oxford University is the ultimate goal in this stage. The tech path to Edu is affected by difficulty level, the result from Oracle, and AI's choice of techs. Generally the 1st classical era/big tech (trade bait) would be one of Aes, CoL, and Math. Then you either beeline to CS->Paper->Edu or make a detour to Literature(if you have Marble)->Music 1st. Depending on AIs' behavior, you might want to research Currency as soon as you learn Math/Alpha.
Part II
1. Expansion with war
You should have a reasonable well-developed empire now and your research ability is great (with OU and the cash saved after Edu). Now it's time to acquire your desired military tech, usually I'd use cannons for war since this path is on route to AL. In the same time, you want to beeline to liberalism and take something big. Ideally it's Assembly Line (AL), however, it's usually very hard to achieve in higher level, the alternate could be the critical military tech such as Steel or Military tradition. Once you start the war, you will only stop when you are close to exceed the domination limit. One important thing about the war is that you want to keep it cheap. For example, swordman will do the same job for cleaning as infantry after cannons. Cannons initially and bombers afterward are your major weapons. I have rarely promoted units unless they are free.
2. Corporations
Corporations are another reason why you want a big empire since this is the only way to collect the most corporation resources, including the monopoly resources in the hand of your vassals. Mining and Food Corporation could speed up your victory for 10+ turns.
Mining Inc -- This is definitely needed. You should try to produce a GE whenever handy, for example, from wonders like mids, hanging garden, and an engineer specialist from Forge. If not, then the extra 3 engineers from Ironwork and 2 from factory will greatly help. This is one important reason why I chose Steel/cannons for war and then beeline to Railroad and AL for Mining Inc and the huge production bonus from factories.
Sushi -- Unless you roll some less popular maps like Great Plain, Sushi resources are usually more abundant than Cereal Mills. Another important factor is that Sushi comes earlier than Cereal Mills.
Of course, you want to have Wall Street (ideally in your holy city with shine) and Courthouses in the cities.
3. Civics
Representations + Bureaucracy/Nationalhood(if you have trouble of happiness)/Free Speech (if you capture a lot of towns) + Cast System/Slavery + Free Market + OR/Pacifism/Free Religion
You should be running multiple golden ages at least 48~72 turns before your anticipated launch time, so you can freely switch civic every 5 turns, mainly among Slavery + OR for infrastructures whip and CS + Pacifism for GPs, and CS + Free Religion for research.
4. Tech Path
The priority of techs are
Liberalism path techs / en route techs to desired tech from liberalism / military tech for war
AL / Biology->Medicine / Communism / Physics (if you are threatened to lose the free GSpy and GS)
Superconductor (For RI) -> Rocketry (For Apollo Program) -> the rest SSV required techs.
5. Well-scheduled SS part production
After you setup corporations, you should be able to acquire SS part related techs in every 1~2 turns. As a result, you should also setup multiple productive cities to build the parts in the same pace as you learn the correspondent techs. For example, you IW city and/or your capital is set to build the most expensive engines, and your weaker cities to build the cheap parts like castings and thrusters.
In my experience, you could achieve SSV in 1600~1700 AD on a common map without too much trouble.
As different settings might affect the strategies. Therefore, it's not surprising that you could find better ways here and there in your experience. To sum up, I will be talking about default setting (non-isolated or semi-isolated, standard size map, Normal/Epic) as that's most players are doing, and it's more feasible for the difficulty level from Monarch to Immortal. If you have interest in more specific examples, I played BOTM29 (Immortal 1650AD), SGOTM12 (Plastics Ducks, Emperor 1755AD), and BOTM37 (Monarch 1605AD) for SSV.
The most important factor for SSV is the beaker output or commerce, which can only come from citizens and trade routes. Therefore the core idea of the strategies is to found an empire as big as possible.
Part I Opening -- Setup your empire peacefully
The goal in this stage is to grab all available good sites nearby peacefully as fast as possible and still able to learn Education and hence build Oxford University (OU) in time. This is usually achievable ~500AD. In general, it's easier to research Edu ~1AD and your cities are not big enough to whip the universities. This is common since founding cities has higher priority and usually you also want Forge before University. The solution is putting your science slider to 0% till you complete OU.
1. REXing
Land is power, this applies to every difficulty level, including deity, although in higher levels, the barbarians, AIs, and maintenance are going to pose more challenge to do so. All cities will contribute to your empire positively when they are mature, but this takes time and generally they are eating your commerce before mature although they add production. However, there are exceptions where you want to grab the sites as soon as possible:
Great LightHouse (GLH) -- If you can spot 5+ coastal sites and see a reasonable chance of grabbing it. Don't hesitate, try all your effort for it. Depending on the available foreign trade routes and islands (hence intercontinental domestic trade routes), GLH lets your coastal cities up to 10 become profitable from beginning on commerce.
2nd and 3rd city -- If you settle your 2nd city close and connected to your capital, it could be a gain in commercial (2 C from trade route and 1C from city center at least plus the possible yield from 1st citizen) even in deity. So do have a plan to settle your 2nd city as soon as possible when safe, this usually won't be a problem in immortal and below.
Sites with early commercial resources (Gold/Gem/Silver/Fur) especially in the 1st ring -- City with those resources will start to add income to empire after it grow to size 2~3 in 5~10 turns (depend on available food resources). Another important benefit of early commercial resources is that they each provide an extra happiness, which is quite important before you have Monarchy or Pyramids (mids).
After you learn Currency and CoL, except the threat of coming war, there's nothing else to stop you from expansion.
There has been long-time debating of farm vs cottage, I don't want to involve too much into this issue. From my experience, you usually want to cottage your capital for OU and better to farm most of your other cities for faster expansion, faster infrastructures, and faster war preparation through the whipping.
Another thing that deserves of mentioning is that the number of workers needed, I rarely use more than 1 worker per city in any stage. In some types of maps, especially when in the case of getting GLH, I can live with merely 2 workers until up to 8~10 cities. You only need your workers to improve up to 3 tiles in most cases since you would want to whip at size 4 for granary, LH, and finally 2 pop whip of a worker!
Of course, there are also exceptions that you want to go for an early rush when there are warmongers nearby and some cities are just close and too great to be skipped. The goal is the same, you want a solid big empire with OU as early as possible.
2. Wonders
Most wonders are beneficial commercial wise to support the REXing without sinking your economy too much. On the other hand, they slow down the REXing pace. The timing and balance between REXing and wonder building is highly skillful. The basic idea is try to grab the critical wonders as fast and hence as safe as possible, and as slow and also as safe as possible to enable reasonable REXing. One of my criteria of measuring the value of a wonder is the hammer commerce/beaker ratio. For example, if you take CoL as free tech from Oracle (Normal Speed, Emperor level, without Marble), then the value of the Oracle is 546/1.2/150 = 3 beakers/hammer in the 1st glance. With a deeper thought, there are much more, the possible free border pop and happiness from religion, and the possible techs from trade, the actual value of Oracle will be easily more than 10 beakers/hammer. If you want to have a better idea of converting hammer to commerce/beaker, think about building wealth/research, that 1:1 ratio. Here's a list of wonders which are worthy in certain situation.
GLH -- The most powerful wonder in certain map as mentioned above. The only thing you want to produce is settler afterward.
The Colossus -- Another powerful wonder and very very powerful with financial leaders. It definitely worth of delaying Astronomy as late as possible.
Oracle -- The most steadily beneficial wonder in all kinds of map. Depending on the leader trait and in game situation, the choice could be Code of Law (CoL), Metal Casting (MC), Currency, and even Civil Service(CS).
The Great Library (TGL) -- With Marble, it's a great wonder. I'd usually build it in capital and immediately build National Epic. They together will generate 18 (Great people point) GPP per turn. In most of the games I have played, this is how I setup my initial GP farm.
Mids -- Without Stone, I won't consider it. Even with stone, it's a mediocre wonder. The most important reason is that mids is too expensive. Even with stone, 250 hammers are huge investment early on. Another reason is that Hereditary Rule (HR) is also a very good civic, especially when you want to whip heavily, and in most cases, you do.
Temple of Artemis (ToA) -- With marble, this wonder is quite powerful if you have a strong productive capital to build it early enough, with NE, it could contribute ~1000 GPs before it is obsolete.
MoM -- You definitely need it, but it's better to let AI build it for you. Since most or all of your GAs will be launched in late stage of your game, you should be able to capture it in time.
3. Great persons (GP)
You want 1 GS for academy in your capital. Other than that, any other type of GP is good, you can either settle it (GPriest, GM, GS, GE), or bulb it ( 1 GS for Edu, or more if you are pressed by other AIs for liberalism race), or save it for Corporation (GE) and GAs ( GArtist). Since you will be able to run at least 4~6 GAs (1 from Taj, not count event triggering GAs), so even GArtists have their non-negligible usage. In conclusion, capital with wonders is the only GP farm in this stage and before Biology and food corporation.
4. Civic
Hereditary Rule(HR) + Bureaucracy + Slavery + Organized Religion (OR) combo is the most common choice in this stage.
Representation is not very beneficial in early stage since most of your cities will be busy in pumping settlers/workers and whipping infrastructures like granaries, light houses, libraries, and etc. So there's really little room for running specialists to take the advantage of Representation, this is one of the reason why I said that mids are mediocre wonder even with stone. HR and slavery combo is so powerful for you to whip crazy for fastest REXing.
5. Diplomacy
Unless your neighbor's capital is so close and juicy, generally you want to maintein peace with AIs for peaceful expansion. There are ways of pleasing AIs like sharing religion and favorite civic, trading techs, open borders, providing resources, and etc. One of the trick that deserved mentioning is gifting a junk city -- this is the earliest available way (before Alphabet) to bump your neighbor to be pleased to you, sometime it's easier and cheaper than defending.
6. Tech Path
As I said in the beginning, learning Education and building Oxford University is the ultimate goal in this stage. The tech path to Edu is affected by difficulty level, the result from Oracle, and AI's choice of techs. Generally the 1st classical era/big tech (trade bait) would be one of Aes, CoL, and Math. Then you either beeline to CS->Paper->Edu or make a detour to Literature(if you have Marble)->Music 1st. Depending on AIs' behavior, you might want to research Currency as soon as you learn Math/Alpha.
Part II
1. Expansion with war
You should have a reasonable well-developed empire now and your research ability is great (with OU and the cash saved after Edu). Now it's time to acquire your desired military tech, usually I'd use cannons for war since this path is on route to AL. In the same time, you want to beeline to liberalism and take something big. Ideally it's Assembly Line (AL), however, it's usually very hard to achieve in higher level, the alternate could be the critical military tech such as Steel or Military tradition. Once you start the war, you will only stop when you are close to exceed the domination limit. One important thing about the war is that you want to keep it cheap. For example, swordman will do the same job for cleaning as infantry after cannons. Cannons initially and bombers afterward are your major weapons. I have rarely promoted units unless they are free.
2. Corporations
Corporations are another reason why you want a big empire since this is the only way to collect the most corporation resources, including the monopoly resources in the hand of your vassals. Mining and Food Corporation could speed up your victory for 10+ turns.
Mining Inc -- This is definitely needed. You should try to produce a GE whenever handy, for example, from wonders like mids, hanging garden, and an engineer specialist from Forge. If not, then the extra 3 engineers from Ironwork and 2 from factory will greatly help. This is one important reason why I chose Steel/cannons for war and then beeline to Railroad and AL for Mining Inc and the huge production bonus from factories.
Sushi -- Unless you roll some less popular maps like Great Plain, Sushi resources are usually more abundant than Cereal Mills. Another important factor is that Sushi comes earlier than Cereal Mills.
Of course, you want to have Wall Street (ideally in your holy city with shine) and Courthouses in the cities.
3. Civics
Representations + Bureaucracy/Nationalhood(if you have trouble of happiness)/Free Speech (if you capture a lot of towns) + Cast System/Slavery + Free Market + OR/Pacifism/Free Religion
You should be running multiple golden ages at least 48~72 turns before your anticipated launch time, so you can freely switch civic every 5 turns, mainly among Slavery + OR for infrastructures whip and CS + Pacifism for GPs, and CS + Free Religion for research.
4. Tech Path
The priority of techs are
Liberalism path techs / en route techs to desired tech from liberalism / military tech for war
AL / Biology->Medicine / Communism / Physics (if you are threatened to lose the free GSpy and GS)
Superconductor (For RI) -> Rocketry (For Apollo Program) -> the rest SSV required techs.
5. Well-scheduled SS part production
After you setup corporations, you should be able to acquire SS part related techs in every 1~2 turns. As a result, you should also setup multiple productive cities to build the parts in the same pace as you learn the correspondent techs. For example, you IW city and/or your capital is set to build the most expensive engines, and your weaker cities to build the cheap parts like castings and thrusters.
In my experience, you could achieve SSV in 1600~1700 AD on a common map without too much trouble.
My thanks to have put your energy into an article and have shared your experiences. 
.
(I normally play with small empires).
