lschnarch:
All of those characteristics about the game were obvious from the demo. If a player doesn't like that many things about the game, then it is inconceivable why he would venture to purchase such a game, knowing that it is largely abhorrent to him on so many fundamental levels.
BS.
The broken diplomacy was hardly to be identified from within a game in the *first* 100 turns. Even less can you identify the inability of the AI to go for victories in an appropriate manner. Same with the lack of interesting gameplay if not being at war.
And so on.
Furthermore, many of these issues that are pointed out are present in previous versions of Civ, which these people purport to like. Again, it appears as if they are just trying to grasp at anything and everything to try to justify their antipathy.
The same old argument over and over again.
I would have expected (even more after the full-bodied announcements) that they would have tried to *improve* weaknesses of older versions.
I mean, you can't build happiness unless you have a religion?
Beg your pardon?
Health is no longer an issue. That got streamlined out. Does anyone really complain? Not me. Doesn't seem to have occurred to you. How does it add to the game to have a second, redundant "happiness" mechanic to manage on top of the base one? It wasn't harder - it was literally just another happiness mechanic that was virtually identical to the actual happiness mechanic.
Beg your pardon again?
Health was a growth modifier.
Distance has been folded into happiness. I like this. I did view distance maintenance with profound distaste. This is because distance maintenance directly affects the spread of empires, and in the Age of Exploration, empires were anything but contiguous and compact. It wasn't practical to have an empire so widespread that the sun never sets on it. That is now possible. I like it.
Distance in the real world comes with costs.
In Civ5 I magically beam my resources from some place deep into the backwoods into all other cities of my empire. Actually, in Civ5 due to roads no longer been needed it has become even worse than in Civ4 with its unquantifiable resources which at least had to be connected.
What about spaghetti roads? Anyone clamor to bring that back?
The spaghetti roads were mainly a visual thing. Yet, they served indeed a gameplay feature: accessibility to resources and easier traffic.
In Civ5, the accessibility has been "streamlined" away and the easier traffic has not been achieved.
No transferring of food from one city to another. No transferring of production, either. Streamlined away.
Civ 4 is like Civ 5 in this manner. It just so happens that you didn't personally care for all the things in previous Civ games that they removed in Civ 4.
Well, it doesn't look like it would have been reintroduced into Civ5, does it?
No? They're overhauling the combat engine! You can't expect them to do that, and still rework all the broken things from Civ 4 into something that was actually workable. It's better to just leave those things out to be included in later expansions, than put them in and have to deal with gutting the code in later installments.
Do you mind explaining in which way an overhaul of the combat engine would conflict with overhauling so-called "broken" mechanics from Civ4?
Actually, one could say that introducing a broken "overhaul" at the costs of simply cutting other features doesn't really constitute any improvement.
You're blaming Firaxis' marketing folks for presenting their product in the best possible light? Forgive me, but isn't that what marketing folks are supposed to do? I mean, if Firaxis didn't want to put its best foot forward, then shouldn't it just fire its marketing team?
As soon as that presentation is done by misleading statements, yes, the marketing folks are to be blamed.
It's about statement in Shafer's interview, so let's not characterize this as me ignoring things. I just don't agree that those statements were inherently misleading.
In the context of what they (Firaxis) are telling us now these previous statements of Shafer are very much misleading.
But I don't mind these efforts of yours. It's fun watching someone else be so easily and well amused. Passes the time nicely. I've answered your questions about Civ V to the best of my poor ability, and if you choose to twist my opinions, as others have pointed out to me, that's fine, too. Have a nice day, and safe travels! 
I think some of you guys need to be playing city sim games, or Cleopatra or something.
But, it was an expansion addition, so we'll probably get that here too.
