Keep subjective stuff and preferences out of this list. This is objective issues and troubles the vast majority of people have... graphical issues, glaring imbalances, missing features, etc.
- a lot of the buildings are pretty much useless, some Wonders as well. As an example, you can put a lot of hammers in a building that makes you build military units a bit faster, but with so few military units in the game there's really no point.
This is a fact, and an ongoing discussion is going about how some buildings are not nearly worth their cost.
- the XP's and the features they can 'buy' for military units, does not have the impact they should on the battlefield. Specializing your unit to fight better in flat or hilly terrain is an odd choice. This system worked so much better and made a lot more sense in Civ4.
This is subjective. I very much like the choice of focusing units on terrain first and advanced stuff. It requires you to play the game differently. You want to set up specific units for specific areas of combat...
If you are fighting in the plains and deserts of North Eastern Africa and the Middle East, you want to have lots of open Terrain specialized units.
If you are fighting in the jungles of the Amazon in South America, then you want the rough terrain promotions.
It is dynamic and and interesting. Ambigious all purpose promotions that unlock everything tend to end up as a no brainer to just click through with no thought in civ IV.
This does not belong on the list.
- a game can very fast turn into gold or culture boosting your civ until the very end and not much else, which makes the gameplay quite limited compared to the different approaches in Civ4
Depends on how you play the game in all honesty... In the end of my last game I was stuggling to keep my happiness and gold production in line with my growing empire, while dealing with the ever growing threat of Gandhi busting out of Africa and invading the rest of the world, so I had to maintain my choke while trying desperately to keep up to the tech of his hugely expanded population with my smaller more specialized diplomatic one. I would say there is a ton to do. Did you try upping your difficulty?
- social policies should be more flexible and not 'carved in stone' as it appears now when you have made a choice, or I simply don't know how to get the most out of them at this time.
I played Civ IV for years and in all honesty I was merely given the illusion of choice with Civics... 9/10 times there was a "right" choice for what civic you were supposed to be in. But there was some variance depending on what victory path you choose to pursue.
Civ V has basically the same thing, except it doesn't try to pretend you have the option to switch to something else. I prefer Social Policies to Civics any day of the week. I am still experimenting with different combos of Policies. I find when you decide the path you want to take to win, you actually have a variety of options for every victory path. Do you want oligarchy to fight a more defensive war? Do you want to go for a more cultural diplomatic victory? How about a diplomatic city state conquest victory so they can provide you with units (and WOW they give you a lot when you are friends with all the military ones)?
These are all options with different choices of Policies.
Anyway, this point is more a matter of preference, and not an issue with the game.
- I like the strategic element on the battlefield a lot - much more care in lining up your units before declaring war. But the AI is imo pretty bad. It's very easy to overwhelm your enemy with superior tactics. I'm playing CiV at Prince level, Emperor level with Civ4+BTS.
Bad AI is a fact.
- removing the sliders for gold/science/culture/espionage is a mistake. It gave flexibility in your overall strategy and I didn't know how much I would miss them until I played CiV. Removing espionage as well is also a setback.
What sliders? Removing sliders? They never had sliders in Civ V...
They did in Civ IV? Well that doesn't really matter, since this isn't Civ IV. The game works very differently... There are other ways to get science and culture that can all be acquired directly with gold. The system is different. If you insist on the slider mentality then think of the slider being at 100% gold and 0% science and culture. How are you going to compete in science and culture? Well get it from other sources, and use your excess gold to get some extra.
Again, this is a matter of preference and does not belong on this list of issues...