One of the many beauties of VP is that it is offering a player much freedom when it comes to playstyle. Unlike vanilla many policy tress and combinations are strong and viable,you are not locked to four cities tradition anymore. Of course certain starts call for certain measures. You cannot possibly go tradition on a very bad land with two warmongers as your only neighbors on the opposite sides of your borders. You shouldn't also take progress or authority when you don't have many good city locations or you are not planning to war, peacefully or not, you have to expand to at least seven cities, more provided there will be good city locations (but not too early! you need to have enough of development potential with workers and gold to invest in buildings and good tiles to work). For right or ninth city it is sometimes worth to wait until pioneers (build settler in advance, and upgrade to pioneer with gold, as they are four times more expensive in production)
When settling a city, especially a capital, the most important part is what immediate good tiles it would have within its immediate borders. Three food or production tiles are awesome. Generally you want a mix of food and production and gold, city that mostly have flatland for farms is a bad idea.
Try to put your cities so that they bonuses stack. For example if you have location for two good cities with three pastures and five forests and two plantations, don't split them but maximize. Put one city so it can have stables and all three pastures connected, and the other so it can work two plantations and at least four forests to maximize herbalist and workshop bonuses. It would be much better than making stables and herbalists in both cities, you save production and get all of bonuses. Same with stone and stone works (never built it for one resource). If you go wide, split guilds so every city will have one of them.
Mixing policies, especially tradition with progress, is usually a very bad idea as you should aim for different things with them. The only exception to that is progress with authority but it requires sacrifices from second policy trees and is more advanced. Finishing trees is very good.
Tech order will very because of two things: wonders and unique buildings to beeline and terrain. With plantations luxuries you want calendar fast, with camps you want trapping and so on.
Generally, they are two opening strategies: tall which is tradition, with which you should focus on working specialists, getting key wonders (Hanging Gardens or Artemis (terrain dependent) or Great Library) and delay other cities a little, or wide with progress or authority, which should focus on getting as much cities as possible as fast as possible and enough workers to connect resources and get monopoly bonuses.
If you want religion build invested shrines first in other cities.
If going progress always take opener, then worker policy, then plus three science and three food in cities (unless it's coastal, then go left side first). Use you free worker to improve luxuries and buy another to build a city connection to your capital.
If going progress prioritize close city locations than far away, as you want to build road between cities to get plus three science as fast as possible.
The best utilization of your gold early is to buy workers and using workers to connect luxuries to sell to the AI (always sell all initial copies, happiness is not an issue at this point of the game) and getting yields and monopolies.
Whatever you aim for, in early game prioritize getting religion as strong religion is worth at least as much as full finished policy tree.
Worker or unit is nearly never a good option for the first thing to build in your capital. I always start with a monument but shrine is also viable if your civ doesn't have any bonuses to religion.
Early policies, pantheon and religion beliefs are the most important choices of the game I think, more than tech order. All are strong, but some can be far stronger for you than others depending on your game plan (tall or wide).
It would be easier to say something if you will ask more direct questions or if you will share some screenshots of your early games with us. Then we could tell you what to improve when you show us how to you play tradition or authority. Good luck, have fun
