Re-litigating the early issues of Civ5 and 6 is beyond the scope of this thread, but I'm perplexed that you don't seem to remember any problems.
I have a number of very specific memories of the early days of Civ VI. Including my first game (with Rome), finding that lategame science costs were too low and that someone (I think Olleus?) made a mod for that within a day, and that my old laptop had some weird energy saving feature that made the game lag if I wasn't plugged in, which led to me playing Civ IV instead when I was on the train.
What I do
not remember, however, are significant early issues - balance doesn't qualify, and neither does an old laptop doing something weird. So perhaps you could name
a few of the issues Civ VI had on release, according to you? Because with the number of memories I have from the early days, I would expect to also remember such issues if they existed.
Oh, right, one other memory I have: the game being praised on these forums for releasing in a better state than either IV or V.
The biggest downside of Civ5 at launch was lack of attention for late game play. They tested early game a lot, but late game was quite terrible. This came from both time limit and lack of experience in management.
Yeah, agreed.
Except for global happiness, that was an even bigger downside. As was science and culture costs scaling with city count. And how much better Tradition was than Liberty, further punishing the player for trying to build an empire. And the misleading game mechanic of city connections providing extra income... but roads having upkeep which cancels this out, meaning you can't actually improve your economy that way. And the incredibly one-dimensional way of building improvements. None of the choices of Civ IV, none of the real estate competition of Civ VI. And... well let's just say that a few months ago I decided to play a full game start to finish specifically to freshen up on why I dislike the game so much, and
despite that I hardly managed a hundred turns before I gave up on the torturous experience.
And that's after the game received two expansions and years of updates.