I'd dabbled in Civ but didn't start going hard core until Civ 3. I remember running to the mall during the lunch hour of grade 12 on launch day and picking up a copy for myself and my best friend. Thinking I was all sophisticated playing Civ games now lol.
I was in the same boat as alot of veterans where I thought the franchise was getting better and better until Civ 5. Vanilla Civ 5 was disastrous for me. It shattered my faith in video games. I thought "All the series I like are terrible now. I guess I'm just done". Thankfully 2011 turned me around, but I just couldn't believe how bad Vanilla Civ 5 was. I just sat there and felt like I had no desire to do anything. There was no "Just one more turn" feeling because everything around the corner didn't feel exciting or was prohibitive. I never felt like building more cities (Until I found out the strategy in 1.0 was to build ALL THE CITIES with only a circus in them.......). Yeah, hated everything about it.
I bought the 2 expansions last year and thought "Allright, it's actually an allright game now", but this is Civ, it shouldn't take 2 expansions to be "Allright". I was happy to find out that the lead on Civ 5 left a while ago and that the Gods and Kings team actually had alot of great ideas. I was worried because I thought the Civ 5 team went on to Beyond Earth, but apparently that must have been a splinter group. If the team that made Civ 5 playable (A Herculean feat in my mind....) had almost 4 years to build Civ 6 from scratch, I'm excited!
So far everything I've heard sounds great. Technology sounds interest, the new attachments to military units sounds great, the terrain is awesome, the art style is fantastic and reminds me of 4. The new city changes are interesting, though so far I'm a bit sad that cities don't look like they're naturally "Sprawling outwards" but instead have satellite districts dotted around it, but whatever. I love that government types are back and how they work with the new card slots. The only thing I haven't seen that I want to is a return to Civ 4's "Wide and Tall" trade off systems. I really liked how the trade offs worked in Civ 4, it was easy to understand what your citizens needed for high population, and what the trade offs were building more cities. I kind of hope they put in a good system that makes me think "Do I have the resources to expand further outwards, do I have the resources for high population? What would it take to do that?".
Anyways I'm more excited for this than any other Civ game really.
Great first post! Welcome to the Forums.

I agree with pretty well all your sentiments. Let's hope for a wonderful Civ VI.
