EDITED for clarification.
INB4 accusations of changing claims: Civ5 pre-launch was clearly advertising Civ5 as a movement towards tactical level combat "as seen in Panzer General" and they put great emphasis on that.
I watched several civ 6 videos, but the latest one,
showing off religion was quite a revelation.
I don't think Civ 6 is an upgrade to 5. Yes, there are hexes, city states and other similarities, but I don't think its actually a polish of Civ5, Brave New World was a polish.
Even now, before launch in its pre-vanilla state, it looks much more detailed than civ5, with many more meaningful "levers" that can be pulled. Civ 6 truly feels more a reboot than an upgrade.
On one hand, it makes sense. They are introducing many, many new mechanics that will be polished through expansions. Interconnectedness of various game mechanics/levers will also make - if not for a better - at least for a more interesting AI. From a general gameplay perspective, this game even now looks like 10 times more fun than Civ 5.
However, I'm surprised they took this direction. In my opinion, the game looks more like a god game (Settlers, city builder), "Sim Civ" if you like, not as a
strategy game tactical game that Civ5 was heading towards. Don't get me wrong, I love god games, loved them since Populous. But I'm not a big fan of mixing genres.
An old example would be HoMM IV where they tried to introduce "roleplaying elements". I wasn't a really big fan of that. The same is true for, say Fallout 4 vs Witcher. Where Fallout went "builder", Witcher went with more RPG. Compared to New Vegas, I consider Fallout 4 a sidestep, not a sequel.
And I guess I feel the same about Civilization 6. From what I've seen so far, it will be a great
sim strategy game, just not a great
strategy tactical game.
I guess a re-clasification is in order.
I'm not sure what Sid Meier's original plan for Civ was, was it to be a
god game CMS/strategy game or
strategy/tactical game, but it sure looked till Civ 5 that the direction it was taking was towards "
strategytactics first". Maybe I'm wrong and it was intended to be a "Sim Civ" all along (like RRT or Colonization).
If Civ was to be a
god game CMS/strategy all along, then it's a reboot. If it was to be a
strategy strategy/tactical game, it's a sidestep compared to Civ5.