Actually I am playing Civ4 and greatly prefer IT to this New abomination to the franchise. And btw the whole go back and play civ4 comment is getting a little old.
People said exactly the same about Civ4. It just takes time to actually get used to the changes and that things aren't the way they used to be. People get comfortable and really grow accustomed to a game like Civ. When things change it makes you want what you grew up with, or were attached to. Nothing wrong with that, but labelling something an abomination is a bit harsh.
If I do remember right, they did fire a bunch of AI devs after IV. Which really explains why there are the same AI bugs in V and VI. They are probably using interns as bulk of their workforce with QA being composed of basically one game not played to the end.
Why? The AI in Civ4 vanilla was trash. Why is it so essential to have them? Plus the mechanics of the game change with every generation, so you can't just tweak the AI it has to be built from scratch.
Really? I've been watching this industry slowly slide into the gutter for 10 years. Now, even the Japanese devs are turning to hacks. It's a matter of standards ultimately. Market experience has shown people will gladly buy broken, untested games as long as they look pretty. Personally I just see a bunch of laziness that can be fixed with a few simple clicks in the editor. It's not a coincidence modders make better versions of games than developers do.
Modders don't make better versions (no offence to modders, as they do great work!) it's just that they don't have the inherent limitations of the developer. Firaxis need to be able to make changes to the AI as they patch, launch expansions and DLC. If they AI is too specific then there is a good chance it will need a complete overhaul with some of these changes because it will just be incompatible. They want the AI to be as good as possible, while making it capable of being updated and changed easily. Telling an AI that it needs to act in this way and do these things in this circumstance may make a more competitive AI for now, but when the values it runs on change (potentially drastically) it can just implode. Or worse, be incompatible with said changes and need to be redone almost entirely.
The reason gaming quality is falling (generally) is an economic one. Games still sell for the same price as a decade or two ago, but cost a lot more and have much higher demands of them. Small-mid developers are at a risk of collapse with each game, the bigger ones play it safe and do yearly instalments (see EA). This means that most people working on a non-indie game (although I know a lot of indie peeps who still suffer this) have poor pay, horsehocky hours and horrible work-life balance. Want to help fix that? Be willing to pay double for top quality games, prepared to fork out for good expansions and DLC. Make the gaming industry profitable enough to get proper investment and high work standards. But that isn't going to happen any time soon.