My opinion is that Civ3 fans have a lot to like from Civ5. The lead designer of Civ5 was a Civ3 addict and that's shown in his handiwork.
I made a theory once on the Civ3 side of the house about this line of thought...
Is civ5 the new civ3?
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=438455
I was promptly ran out of the room...
joking aside, I really think Civ5 has more in common that it shares with Civ3 than most people give it credit for (including the hate from the Civ2/Civ4 side of the house)
I kinda get why the people who broke into Civ with Civ3 would not like Civ4 (full disclosure: I broke in with Civ3 vanilla). I made a post about it.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10668967&postcount=24
The funny thing is that I was a far better player in Civ4 than I ever was in Civ3. I can actually win at Prince level in Civ4. I suck at Monarch in Civ3.
Just as a curiosity, what don't you like about Civ4? I can (and have in the linked posts) named many many dislikes I have about Civ4. But I also think Civ4 has many good features.
I've even tried to make a Civ4 mod that heavily plays like Civ3 but I just gave up because Civ4 and Civ3 are just too apples and oranges to make it work. (see the post of some of my ideas)
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10685465&postcount=30
I still think Civ5 becomes the fully moddable Civ3 everyone in the Civ3 subforums have been waiting for. They might not think this is the moddable Civ3 but I bet it ends up being the perfect substitute. (a bunch of community people already tried to buy the source code for Civ3 to mod it and/or make the editor better but 2K lawyered up)
It's just in the offing that once we see how this new xpak performs, we'll see more mods coming out for Civ5 that changes full dynamics of the game (um... i haven't been around for a while, is the SDK .dll out yet?)
Anyways, I loved Civ3 and I think Civ5, especially with this new xpak, will be a game I will have fond memories of... just like Civ3.
my two cents... etc. etc.