If you are a beginner, focus on acquiring a variety of Resource cards (brown and silver cards). This strategy will not require you to analyze your opponents' boards or strategies as much. Playing 3-4 Resource cards should be enough to allow you to play a variety of cards, and some yellow Commercial cards may supplement this by generating resources or allowing you to purchase resources from your neighbours at a discounted rate. You will normally only need access to one of each of the silver manufactured Resource cards, unless you have a Wonder that requires more.

If you go the economic route by focusing on yellow Commercial cards, pay attention to the people next to you. Some wonders (Alexandria, Olympia B) can do very well with very few resources, so trading posts to those wonders will be almost useless. Some wonders (Giza, Rhodes) do especially well with many Resource cards, so trading posts to them will typically be very useful. Also, yellow cards on their own don't tend to score a ton of points; you will probably need to build lots of blue and/or purple cards in addition to the Commercial ones. The lighthouse can be an exception to this if you already have four or more yellow cards, but in four-player there is only one so there is no guarantee that you will get to play it.

Watch out for people who build many green Science cards. Green cards are high risk, high reward. They have to complete sets of three different symbols. Look at their boards to see which symbol they need to complete their next set, then take those cards yourself, before they can acquire them. If building the green card won't help you, then use it to build your wonder or get three coins instead.

Don't build too many red Military cards. Whether you beat your opponents 10 to 1 or 2 to 1, your point rewards are the same. The turns you spend beefing up your already-powerful army may be better spent on other cards.

Side A of your Wonder is usually better for beginners as the resources and rewards are more straight forward to master. Side B of Wonder can be better than side A in the hands of an experienced player, though it is normally harder to build. If you plan to build all stages of your Wonder, aim to secure the resources for the more difficult last stage of your Wonder as soon as possible. You can win without building any stages of your Wonder.

Try to never be short on money. When you are short on money it leads to not being able to get the cards that you want and therefore it leads to losing. It also makes trading post useless because you don't even have one coin to use.

Since this is a card drafting game, a lot of the skill is in maximising your Victory Point scoring opportunities while limiting the opportunities for your neighbours.