Need help with getting wonders early

Hello people,

So im a relatively new player. I got introduced to the game by my dad and my brother and we played a round together on a pretty big map. I obviously didn't do very well on my first attempt (my game had set the graphics quality to the lowest by default, etc.)

But during that first game I realized that my brother had managed to build almost all of the wonders with the exception of a couple of em where ai was much faster. He didnt even have any army really, just workers and focus on building wonders and getting science points. And after that he was one of if not the best nations on the entire map. While for me and my dad it was going miserably (constant discontent, etc.)

We are soon going to play another round, but this time I wanted to make sure that I atleast didn't miss out on too many of the early game wonders, since they do seem to boost your empire a lot.

(By the way we all play on the prince difficulty)

I've been looking up a lot about how to focus on wonders, and which are of higher priority to you or ai. Now the question is, firstly how do you get the "Social Wonders" (i think they are called like that)

And what would be the fastest strategy to getting the early game wonders as soon as possible before anyone and which ones are worth ignoring , while also not stagnating your cities growth too much.

(prince, gods & kings dlc, beginner, 3 human players, 4+ ai)