If you're one of those people that can't like tactical warfare and would rather derp around with stacks then you're still not going to like this game, though.
If you're "one of those people" that thinks that unit selection and tactical choices didn't have an enormous impact on stack combat far beyond "derping around", then you are pretty much telling us straight-up that you don't have sufficient knowledge on both games to give a fair comparison
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Just to give an example that has actually happened: human player invades another human player, and he has nearly 150% of his opponent's power. He has a bigger stack. 15 turns later, he has not only lost his stack, but he's dead...the weaker guy killed him. "Derp"?
The reason I didn't like V initially is that it copied all of IV's basic engine flaws and actually managed to provide a worse (IE more inputs to accomplish the same thing) interface.
V now has as much or more depth than IV, enough that I'm starting to follow it more carefully again.
I never played Civ 4 but I heard about "cottages", so it was possible to grew cities from trading posts?
No, you build cities with settlers. Cottages are trading posts that get stronger over time basically. However, they're also influenced by civic and technology, and since they produce commerce rather than gold, they're tied to the slider. Depending on where you put it and how much it's grown, the cottage-->town line could be anything from completely worthless to arguably the best non-special tile improvement in the game.
In V a lot more of the terrain --> city type specialization is actually in the buildings themselves. Buildings are very different in V and IV.
I don't know if it would be a good idea to have in Civ V, although there has been some discussion.
V has tile improvements that get better based on techs/criteria, it just doesn't have one that grows over time simply by working it independently of other factors. Would such a mechanic where the improvement is initially weaker but could become the strongest add to the gameplay? Maybe a little, but really it's just a somewhat convoluted PV consideration, and without the commerce mechanic (commerce is different from gold and science in IV, and can become either) I'm not sure what it would truly add. We can replicate PV tradeoffs in civ V quite a bit already.
Most of the people with legitimate complaints in Vanilla were pleasantly surprised by the expansions or came to terms with the fact that their complaints were primarily subjective.
I wonder. Those of us who found civ IV's wait times and engine grating certainly didn't find V's more fun to deal with. Where are all the hotkeys? Why add so much effort to queue 5 things up? Why add options like the city governor if you can't use them because they'll starve you?
For all their differences, IV and V carry more similarity than people often want to admit, and unfortunately some of the worst things about IV found their way into V (victory condition balance, civ balance, tendency towards similar openings, horrid programming for run speed, terrible UI in both games). Both games could be improved quite a bit by reducing management tedium. That's tied to both between-turn times and also the constant requirement to do mundane tasks that absolutely never vary or vary extremely rarely, which is a huge break in immersion for a strategy title.
moments for me. Religion provides some interesting choices, and I like the new city-state types and quests. It is still a different game than 3 or 4, and seems (to me) to favor 4-city tall empires.
