First, can you cite some reasons for your statement of belief there?
Second, for me right now it's a totally evident two-track road. Dominate the rubbish AI, which is utterly crippled by the 1upt problem. Or (which I am enjoying right now for the lulz), do my best to ignore the AI and do the city state/trading post thing. Or you can swap in and out of the two, doesn't matter, mix and match. But I really do not think it's going to be just a matter of massaging...
My statement comes from the fact that more decisions in this game come with permanent consequences. Expanding beyond 3-4 cities will aid you in some victory types (such as military conquest) but at the permanent disadvantage of taking you out of the running for other victory types (cultural). Taking a social policy early will give you immediate benefits but at the permanent cost of access to a later and potentially more powerful policy.
I find decisions are far less localized as well. Choosing to annex a city is no longer just a matter of determining whether or not you can recoup its maintenance costs in a timely matter. It will affect your entire empire immediately, so decisions must be made more carefully. Excluding settling for resources, founding another city means you are always running at higher unhappiness for the same population total. So deciding whether to grow vertically or horizontally is a trickier decision.
Ultimately, the AI needs some patching. Until the AI is competitive in war (either by smarter use of tactics or level-based advantages which are always necessary to compete against a human), the game is clearly unbalanced. But assuming that point can be reached (certainly a large assumption but great strides were made with the Civ4 AI from release), I feel the game's decisions will be more difficult than in Civ4.
I'll respond to this with three points:
1) I disagree with your statement that expansion was unconditionally awarded in civ iv. There are costs--direct and indirect. New cities, especially in the early game prohibited expanding too quickly, due to city maintenance costs. There were indirect costs as well. Getting too big meant getting entangled in diplomatic and military conflicts that could embroil the player in them.
The early game expansion was limited primarily by maintenance cost. Again you never thought to yourself "Should I expand beyond 3 cities" in Civ4. You thought "
When should I expand beyond 3 cities". There were certainly ways you could settle cities that would increase tensions. But it was not the mere act of having more cities that caused the problem; proximity to the next civilization was responsible.
2) I also don't think you fairly characterize expansion. You claim it makes the game one dimensional because expansion helps the player achieve certain victories. First, it is only of marginal value in some victory types. Second, I don't think it did not make Civ IV one dimensional. While it was often helpful, it was never essential to victory. Civ IV gave you the choice. Civ V, as I argued and you did not address, does not allow for that luxury. If I want to achieve a cultural victory in Civ IV, I could have started out with different goals and expanded, then shifted given the geopolitical realities. Or I could have just planned to achieve one with fewer cities. That's not one dimensional; that's multidimensional. Civ V boxes the player into one approach. The same goes for diplomacy: buy off the city states. There is no centuries/decades worth of patiently building relations with the AI players. In a dominance victory, I cannot keep the cities without massive unhappiness and penalties that even affect the performance of my soldiers. My only choice is genocide.
Assuming a city could at least cover its maintenance costs, what victory condition in Civ4 would directly penalize you if you suddenly were gifted another city? I argue none. At worst it offered no advantage. In the overwhelming majority of cases it was an advantage. I am very happy to see Civ5 doesn't unconditionally favor more cities.
I can see where you are coming from with city-state diplomacy. I think you either forgetting or omitting the concept of a liberation when you discuss it (no amount of gold changes who the city-state will vote for). I do not find the influence mechanic fundamentally flawed. I think simple tweaks would easily address your concerns. For instance, you could set a maximum amount of influence that counts toward ally status from gifts of gold. For instance if you give enough gold to get 90 influence, only 60 influence will count toward determining who gets ally status. This will ensure a civilization that continually contributes gold and did more tasks for a city-state will be favored over one that simply gave gold. That cap resembles the cap put in place for gifts in Civ4 diplomacy. Below, I discuss more tweaks that would be trivial to make if you find the Civ4 diplomacy to be "deep".
I agree with your take on genocide being the most efficient choice. I agree it is a problem. I think tweaks to the puppet-city feature can solve that. The concept is solid; it just falters in execution because it does not properly balance.
3) You completely sidelined my greater argument, to focus on a minor point. The point on expansion was a minor example of a larger section. You seem to inflate the importance of this. You completely ignored my extensive analysis of the meta-game and victory conditions, which strikes me as odd, as they directly contradict much of what you have to say.
I choose to focus on something you declared was a flaw in the game. I explained how, for me personally, it was not a flaw but an improvement. I wanted to illustrate that for some a lack of flexibility means a greater emphasis on strategy. For some, decisions that carry consequences means the game requires more thought.
If you are truly interested in the bigger discussion of each victory type:
1.) Cultural - I already explained how I think this victory condition is better in Civ5 because it makes it optimal to adopt a different play style than other victory conditions.
2.) Domination - The poor AI makes this more often than not the optimal victory condition. It is the single largest advantage the human has over the AI. However, I'd argue this was true in Civ4 as well. If you had the patience for the tedium of stack-based war, it was often the optimal victory condition. As I explained above I agree with your genocide take but think that this will be fixed with tweaks to the puppet-city mechanic.
3.) Diplomatic - Diplomatic victories in Civ4 were almost equally "shallow" (as you appear to be defining shallow). By that I mean some very small tweaks to the Civ5 system would be nearly equivalent to Civ4.
a.) You claim Civ4 had memory for past transgressions. So does Civ5: the influence system penalizes you for past transgressions.
b.) Civ5 city-states vote for the person they have the best relations with. The same is true of Civ4.
c.) Civ5 allows you to gain influence by giving gifts. Civ4 allows you to gain favor by giving gifts. The difference was Civ4 had a cap on how much "influence" could be gained through direct gifts. I think there is value in bringing that back.
d.) Civ5 allows you to gain influence by militarily aiding a city-state. Civ4 allowed you to gain favor by millitarily aiding a civ.
e.) Civ5 allows you gain influence by fulfilling a city-state request. Civ5 allowed you to gain favor by fulfilling a civilization request.
f.) Civ4 rewarded peaceful relations/open borders. I think adding this to Civ5 in the form of a small influence bonus for maintaining friendly status could do the trick.
g.) Civ4 rewarded shared civics. I could see some value in Civ5 city-states giving influence bonuses to civilizations who adopt certain social policies.
h.) Civ4 rewarded shared religion. Obviously there is no religion in Civ5. But as it pertains to diplomatic victory, the presence of religion in Civ4 led to some huge exploits. I am happy to see it gone in its Civ4 form (though I wouldn't mind seeing a superior religion system added to Civ5).
i.) Civ5 has the concept of a permanent vote when you liberate a captured city-state. Civ4 had no equivalent.
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