Why Civ V is not that "tactical":
1. APs are often used up immediately upon attacking. Knights and Cavaliers appear to be the only units that have true APs, where they attack and then retreat, leaving the hex for another unit to attack.
2. Knights destroy Gunships issues are numerous.
3. Artillery units backing up an infantry unit should give a huge defensive bonus to infantry unit. Most of the time I don't even bother flanking the enemy or attacking it's rear to get to the artillery, because a frontal attack is just as successful and less time consuming. Too often, the terrain prevents any such flanking or rear attacks. The maps are not designed for tactical battles: too small (even on huge maps), too many other cities a few hexes away from the city you are attacking for complex flanking tactics.
4. AI was more challenging with stacks because the rock/scissor/paper stack combos were easy to deal with for the Devs. Now with 1upt, the AI can't deal with the complexity of the terrain + combined arms + your unit positioning... and just ends up sending out units to be slaughtered. That worked in Civ IV because they AI could pump out Modern Armour like candy off the assembly line, but with 20 to 60 turn cycles to build units, the AI's military gets quickly annihilated (as little as 5 to 10 turns sometimes). Where is the tactics after that when you're just rolling over every city and razing it with no opposition.
5. First strike is too powerful. Problem is that units from both civs just sits on both sides of the border and in this sort of unit placement, the first to strike can have a huge advantage. Civ V's tactics are more Tic Tac Toe when it should be Chess. Units should have an "entrenched" value that goes up based on the amount of time the unit has been on alert. Otherwise, fortifications should be built by workers without eliminating the hex's improvement (farm). It it simply too costly to build a lot of fortifications around your city.
6. Cities are way too easy to take. In Civ IV, it could be a real challenge when a dozen or more units where occupying a city. In Civ V, with proper artillery usage, it usually takes one or two units to take a city. For cities on the sea shore, I take five or six naval units and one land unit, and that is usually enough, especially for City States. Infantry units for example could be specialized for city attacks, while tanks, Gunships and Cavs should be rendered useless (or at least less effective) in seizing a city. That would improve the tactics of conquering cities (Panzer General would apply such restrictions).
I've loved each Civilization game and adapted to each new version as it came along. I've had countless hours of fun, sold months of them even. Since Civilization 5 was released, I have been eagerly figuring out how I need and want to conduct myself as a nation in this interesting new edition of a game from such an illustrious and captivating series. I've enjoyed checking it out and I think, in time, I will eventually come to love it. But yes I think it will need a little time for that; at the moment it feels a solid foundation for a great game that I will play a heck of a lot sometime.
