well, this is the last bastion of those of us who "don't like the game", or parts of it... you like the game? This is not your room. Go to the Civ5 Praise thread, if you can find it.
Back to topic.
I don't like parts of it either (and as for 'last bastion', most threads in this forum seem to feature more contributions from people interested in slamming the game than those who like it - something that's par for the course for forums on any game you care to name), but again there are sensible concerns and not-so-sensible ones. And surely if you want a refuge for people who don't like Civ V, the logical place to look is a forum that's not devoted to Civ V at all...?
For instance, take the above example of the settler that can't move out of the way to found a city. Is this a problem with the game? Clearly. Is it a problem with the 4 spaces between cities, a variant of a Civ mechanic from the first game onwards? No. It's a problem with an AI that, unlike those in all previous Civ games, is incapable of choosing a new location once the first choice is denied. Remove the 4 tile restriction and all you'll get is a settler settling in a stupid place that interferes with both your capital's growth and theirs, not a solution to the problem (and what is the point of criticisms if not to identify problems that need solving)?
If you want a rant, I can certainly supply one about my most recent game (Immortal, Pangea, Huge). I regularly checked my diplomatic status with the other civs I'd encountered - a warning flag that the Iroquois (whose territory I hadn't seen) wanted territory I'd settled, even when I only had one city. They seemed to drop the land claim after a while and 'desired friendly relations', but I still had my eye on them.
Having run into a number of other civs in the years since, I checked their relations with the Iroqois. Both Germany and Arabia, friendly with me (but no declarations of friendship) were friends with the Iroqois. So I approached both (and the Iroqois themselves) offering declaration of friendship. Refused in all cases, in the Iroqois case with the "No, I don't think so" response which normally translates as "War is imminent".
Now, luxuries were thinly scattered through the landscape, and in fact only Russia and I had duplicates to trade. So I couldn't influence diplomacy with trade. The Iroqois, I think, had no funds for a research agreement, so that was out. I hadn't expanded into any areas they apparently wanted, and hadn't engaged in relations with any city-states (which were being grabbed by Germany and India). I hadn't successfully built any Wonders. Open borders doesn't affect relations. And being Immortal, the Iroqois were a number of techs ahead of me - they eventually attacked my newest city with three Mohawks when I only had an archer to defend.
This is the core problem with Civ V - in the above my play took full account of my diplomatic options (except, admittedly, for granting presents) as well as evaluating relationships between the Iroqois and other civs that could help me influence them. And it was rewarded by ... complete failure. And clearly I had no control over whether the Iroqois wanted my capital or the tiles it happened to have expanded its borders into (I hadn't bought any tiles). And in my experience something similar always happens on Pangea maps, regardless of difficulty level (it's obviously harder to defend against on higher difficulties). It's not that enemy civs are personality-less or inherently belligerent or schizophrenic, it's that player options to control diplomatic relations are very limited.
I don't necessarily think there should be as many positive modifiers to relations as there are negative ones, but there certainly should be more than there are that are within the player's control, and events that affect relationships over which players have limited control (such as going for the same Wonders) should have less effect than they do. You can see which policy branches another leader has - that gives an obvious way to add a positive modifier for sharing policy branches, say. Trade should have more effect than it does (I think I've only once seen "We've traded recently" as a positive modifier), and open borders probably as well.