I'm a new participant on the forum and missed that debate. Probably V didn't frustrate me enough to register for expressing complaints. But thus you may find me reiterating some arguments here and there, since for me they are new.
That you taught me. I just noticed that the disconnection of Meiers name to the series coincided with a new turn taken at V. I didn't mean to postulate a causal relation, though perhaps it sounded like that.
Yes, it did come across that way, but there's no real coincidence of timing - his name's still on the games and he hasn't been meaningfully involved since long before Civ IV. I'd also argue that it's less correct that Civ V took a 'new turn' (although certain key elements like 1UPT did) than that Civ IV was an anomaly for the series as a whole - it was the only entry without a linear tech tree, the first with customisable government types, the first to introduce Great People (and, less significantly, unit promotions), the only one with a random events system (although Civs I and II had a civil war system that as I recall was semi-random), the only one before Civ VI to have a second management resource (i.e. health as well as happiness), and as I recall it added additional eras, it had far more numerous improvement options than other entries, it was the first to treat religion as a separate game system, the second to include strategic and luxury resources ... among other changes.
In short it was far more detailed (in my opinion, in some ways to its detriment) than the previous and subsequent games alike, but as it was one of the most popular instalments and Civs I and II are both now very old and not available on modern machines, there are a lot of Civ players whose first experience was with Civ IV and for whom that's what the series is about. One of the things I found refreshing about Civ V was the board game simplicity (mechanically - make no mistake, strategically it was more complex by far than Civs I through III) that recalled Civs I and II (as I'd never become heavily invested in subsequent versions). Civ V always felt to me more in the spirit of the series than Civ IV ever did.
Due to lack of versatility on how to play the game I don't experience VI at all as full featured. But perhaps I need to discriminate between those two.
I mean simply in terms of actual game systems - including those like culture which largely duplicate other game systems. I found Civ V's evolution more satisfactory - starting with a clean slate and building up.
To me city states have always been terrible. In V at least I could leave them out of the game. If in a next update I would be able to ditch them I would probably give VI a new chance.
Civ V had a troubled relationship with city-states - they started out badly, were improved substantially by Gods & Kings, and possibly even in BNW ... but at the same time the way civs interacted with them got worse. They were at one point relevant 'game pieces' that could sometimes assist in battle and that would be fought over between civs (either militarily or diplomatically). I had one memorable game where my pursuit towards diplomatic victory was unassailable in terms of AIs gaining influence ... and several AIs ganged up to actively try and invade my city states to steal them from me.
Unfortunately diplomatic victory was implemented best in G&K and BNW took a step back, city-state AI became more passive over time, and they ended up being less interesting. And there were persistent, not unjustified, complaints about gold-buying CSes being too easy, while the BNW changes to resource quests meant that the player already ahead in science etc. was the one getting the CS bonuses that kept them even further ahead.
Instead of fixing these relatively minor issues Civ VI has completely gutted the influence system - no longer can espionage be used to influence city-states dynamically and envoys can never be lost, only gained. So there isn't any of the interaction or counterplay that justified their existence in Civ V - on top of which the bonuses are far greater than they were in that game and the unique bonuses per CS aren't 'play the map' so much as free rewards for getting lucky starts.
I still struggle however how to assess the 1upt systems. My only issue here is that for me the transporters worked much better than the embark system. But I guess that has been a IV vs V discussion already...
Transports were an issue that needed a fix. Instant embarkation, especially with 1UPT, was almost certainly not the correct fix. Transports were irritating production make-work for the player and unmanageable by the AI, which was notoriously incapable of launching overseas invasions. I would say that embarkation is ultimately a better system in my view, but it's definitely not 'job done' and added further AI problems with its tendency to embark while in range of attack (arguably another issue with the ranged combat system more than the embarkation one).