Comparing any game is usually a flawed exercise because you don't know the relative budgets, time allocation, technological constraints and external factors constraining the release. But, people insist on doing it anyway. So if we're accepting this attempt at evaluating the game, we might as well accept CiV as a valid comparison, because it's the closest in the franchise you're going to get both in terms of the market and in terms of similarity in the technology stack.
Certainly, don't compare it to Civ 4. That's a more flawed comparison, despite how limited CiV was at release. There are reasons for the state of CiV on release, just like there are reasons for most things. The thing is, consumers either don't care or don't want to know, unless it serves their purpose. That's the usual problem. It's always "well they should've done X better then", and of course, sure. Things always should be done better. But that's pointless criticism.
