As noted above, playing on the lower levels allows a lot of flexibility. By the time you get to Deity you have to be ruthlessly efficient, which means that the game can become quite formulaic at the beginning (think of classic chess openings). I imagine you are playing at lower levels, but if you want to progress to the higher levels, I would say it is not a bad idea to learn approaches that will be applicable later, rather than trying to break old habits when they no longer work.
Received wisdom seems to be (and there are always exceptions) that you need to settle three cities by about T50, get National College by about T85-90, Education around T105-110, and then it depends. But common strategies seem to be to beeline either Dynamite, Navigation, Industrialisation, or Scientific Method (or whatever it is called -- memory fail) depending on the map, circumstances, the neighbours, etc.
Received wisdom also seems to be that the strongest approach is to complete the Tradition tree as soon as possible, followed by Rationalism, all the while growing like crazy. This is probably the easiest approach for a solid game.
Again, as noted above, it is important to know who your neighbours are, and what to expect from them. Some Civs are programmed to be very aggressive, and WILL attack you, even though they are supposedly friendly.
I found it very useful to read some guides from the forum, such as these:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/tradition-three-cities-approaches.25617/
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/liberty-domination-walkthrough.503931/
An unconventional one:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-city-industrial-era-domination-guide.529482/
For domination:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/domination-on-immortal-deity-a-noobs-guide.547630/
And a good video:
Acken's China DCL 16 video
You might find it useful to read the descriptions of games in the Deity Challenge Lineup series, which are posted in various places in the forum. People playing the same start can have surprisingly different experiences because of the random element in the game. And on that note, if you want to learn, it can be very useful to replay the same game a few times and see how different choices have different outcomes. It can be useful to set the game to save after every turn and keep 200-300 saves (go to options to set this) so that you can go back and replay sections of a game to learn what you could have done differently.
There is a lot to learn! Good luck with it!