1.) stack vs 1upt
As a war MECHANICS, 1upt is more fun, on paper. But when you add in the incompetant A.I. (which is not the fault of CiV... all A.I. as of date are not match for human minds), SoD plays more realistically. Face it, A.I. simply isn't smart enough to handle 1upt.
Well it's not going to get smarter without having people play against it and then research why it's not working as intended.
People keep giving Civ a hard time about this feature but quite frankly I think this flagship feature of Civ 5 is where most of it's improvement lies.
Yes, the AI is at present too clunky to handle it with any finesse. But I would bet heavily on the fact that the lessons being learned from it will make it's next incarnation highly superior.
This is not the first time in the series where a questionable mechanic has been improved upon and refined to produce an ultimately outstanding result.
The point to remember is that Civ 5 is a completely different game. I read a lot here about balance and fixes that when it boils down to it, are simply asking for Civ 5 to behave like Civ 4. So play Civ 4 if it means that much.
Civ has never, in my opinion, been a planet simulator, so quite why people are expecting it to be is rather confusing. It's a strategy game, one of the most complex and best on the market.
While there are issues to be resolved, you'd be hard pushed to find anything on the market these days that doesn't have some. Friaxis pushed the boat out further than they could handle it, but I salute them for that. While there are mistakes made and lessons to be learned, better to have the balls to find out than to play it safe and produce yet another mindless game which is a carbon copy of it's predecessor.
The world does not need one of the best games produced in the past 20 years to suddenly start playing it safe.