I found this video on "player autocracy" interesting. It is the concept that the human player is like a dictator or "god" in most strategy games. They usually have perfect information and have much more control over things than in "real life". The video uses Paradox games as examples with a couple civ references but I think the same applies to civ. In civ, you play a historical leader who lives 6000 years. You control every aspect of the game. Even when you switch to democracy, you still have total control over moving units, passing laws, what cities build etc... This is not a bad thing. I am not suggesting that civ should be a simulator or more realistic. It is just an interesting aspect of strategy games. It is done this way for gameplay reasons. It is one of the things that separates strategy games from simulation games.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the video: