What Is Your Opinion of Civilization 5 As of Today

[Funky]

I've had it shoved down my throat how much better Civ IV is, so I am trying to learn to play it. This is difficult, however, because I find it so boring.

I realize that going back can be difficult, especially when you never experienced what a true Civ game is about. When you associate Civ with an action orientated game with flashy graphics in which you don't have to think all that much, then Civ 4 may indeed appear boring initially. The irony is that for most Civ 4 players Civ 5 is unplayably boring because it discludes most of the elements which had evolved over the years and had become constitutive of the Civ experience. The elements that made the game so enjoyable. In a way you can be happy you started with 5, that way you don't know what you are missing.

Moderator Action: Don't troll around.

 

[JustinianIV]

I realize that going back can be difficult, especially when you never experienced what a true Civ game is about. When you associate Civ with an action orientated game with flashy graphics in which you don't have to think all that much, then Civ 4 may indeed appear boring initially. The irony is that for most Civ 4 players Civ 5 is unplayably boring because it discludes most of the elements which had evolved over the years and had become constitutive of the Civ experience. The elements that made the game so enjoyable. In a way you can be happy you started with 5, that way you don't know what you are missing.

I've considered this. Honestly, the AI DOES sound better in IV.

Although I just wonder if fans of IV would still have such a low opinion of V if it was released as it is now, fully patched with GnK (or BNW if it's good). I did play several games on vanilla Civ V and it was noticeably improved in GnK.

Still, I can't help but thinking that perhaps those who fell in love with Civ via IV hold that as their Civ ideal because it was their first love, whereas the same would apply to people like me who first found V. After all, I have yet to hear of someone who started with V then went to IV and thinks IV is better.

 

[wigwam]

I realize that going back can be difficult, especially when you never experienced what a true Civ game is about. When you associate Civ with an action orientated game with flashy graphics in which you don't have to think all that much, then Civ 4 may indeed appear boring initially. The irony is that for most Civ 4 players Civ 5 is unplayably boring because it discludes most of the elements which had evolved over the years and had become constitutive of the Civ experience. The elements that made the game so enjoyable. In a way you can be happy you started with 5, that way you don't know what you are missing.

Don't presume to speak for "most Civ 4 players." I've been playing the series since the original Civilization came out, and I quite like Civ 5, which I would absolutely consider "a true Civ game."

 

[teks]

I've considered this. Honestly, the AI DOES sound better in IV.

Although I just wonder if fans of IV would still have such a low opinion of V if it was released as it is now, fully patched with GnK (or BNW if it's good). I did play several games on vanilla Civ V and it was noticeably improved in GnK.

I would, but that goes without saying. The first release of civ 5 was total garbage. It's a complaint about PC games as a whole. No one wants to pay $50 to be a beta tester.

Still, I can't help but thinking that perhaps those who fell in love with Civ via IV hold that as their Civ ideal because it was their first love, whereas the same would apply to people like me who first found V. After all, I have yet to hear of someone who started with V then went to IV and thinks IV is better.

No, this is probably not true for a few reasons.

• Many of these people have been playing the whole series.
• There is a ton of features and material in civ 4 that still hasn't been seen in civ 5
• Civ 5 changed the civ environment more then any release to date, and, while that holds appeal and brings in new blood, its a direction a good many of the civ 4 fans aren't fond of.
• Civ 4 has less appeal to new players, and has a much higher learning curve. Many of the automated things in civ 5 require micromanagement in civ 4. Most people don't want to bother with micromanagement (which is why they went this route $$$) but some , espesially older fans, want that level of control. The entire debate could be related to standard vehicles vs automatic. Some people want to have more control.

Civ 4 is a build an empire game with a side of violence. Its all about creating and tailoring an empire to fit your needs. You carefully watch and tend to each city you have. In civ 4 there is far, far more depth in city management and empire management.

Civ 5 is the opposite in a great many ways. Its a violent game with a side of empire building. Improvements take forever, You only have direct control over a limited number of cities, and most tasks like happyness have been removed alltogether in place of a global mechanic. Meawhile the combat system and most things related to it have been improved dramatically over the previous game.

Then there is the less fair but still valid point that civ 5 is still in development, while civ 4 has a ton of amazing mods each of which easily surpasses the work any expansion pack ever could.

Apart from the civ title, the two games are apples and oranges. They appeal to completely different crowds, and thats probably a really good thing for the franchise as a whole. I hope in the future we will see a civ 6 which tries to blend the two games together a bit more.

Of the two crowds I'm a builder. Thats why I still play civ 4 with crazy complex realism mods on a painstakingly detailed world map. I spend my time molding the greeks into the byzantine empire. I Carefully place each city in historically accurate locations (Rather then build sparta, and athens I just create one city called the Hellenic States). I excitedly watch, turn by turn, as the Hellenic States grow into the center of science easily contributing half of my empires research, as Macedonia pumps out alexander's elite soldiers ready to smite the mighty persians, and as constantinople grows from a insignificant fishing village into the trade and commerce capital of the world. In these games war is still common, but its not the main attraction. Often times I fight battles just to preserve the world as I want it to be, and never do I really care about things like objectives or winning.

I'm probably right to assume I'm the minority, otherwise civ 5 wouldn't be the game it is. If civ 4 isn't what appeals to you. If its boring. Well, there is no need to force yourself to play something your not interested in. Civ 5 is coming out with its new expansions, and I think the franchise did the right thing. Personally I think the best ideas were hex tiles, and city states.

 

[Emperor Giulio]

Don't presume to speak for "most Civ 4 players." I've been playing the series since the original Civilization came out, and I quite like Civ 5, which I would absolutely consider "a true Civ game."

I feel the same way, I'm a Civ OG from 93', and I love Civ V. I could never go back to playing the others, regularly at least.

I remember when civ 4 came out, all of the cynics on the board were up in arms about how Civ III was superior. Granted, for me, civ 4 didn't really come into it's own until BTS, nevertheless, it was still a good game.

However, there is a truth to the fact that earlier incarnations had features that Civ V lack. For example, I really liked the idea of vassalizing civs. Also, I miss adjusting my tax rate, as well as tackling issues like corruption, and global warming. I also miss using forced labor to run project, culturally linked starting locations, poisoning the enemy water supply, etc. But at any rate, Civ V has brought back a lot of the features fans wanted, like religion, and a more expanded role for the UN.

I think some of the things that have been omitted were the more controversial aspects of the game. I recall an article that Civ 4 had omitted some of the espionage options in the game, because it was considered to glorify terrorist acts. Also, the issue with global warming, there is a critical mass of people that object to it's very existence.

One of the things I like a lot about Civ 5 is the new combat system, and the removal of stacks o doom. however, what i think would should be done for Civ 6, are small stacks, like 3 or 4 units per-tile.

 

[Rpger29]

The game upon release was pretty good, relative to other games of the day. The early bugs were obviously very frustrating, and there were clearly some pretty big holes in vanilla CiV.

The G&K expansion really revitalized a game that was getting a little stale. That said, the Religion itself is at best a disappointment.

 

[teks]

The game upon release was pretty good, relative to other games of the day. The early bugs were obviously very frustrating, and there were clearly some pretty big holes in vanilla CiV.

The G&K expansion really revitalized a game that was getting a little stale. That said, the Religion itself is at best a disappointment.

Its 2k games new obsession that I'm not fond of. Forced sacrifices. XCOM has tons of them, and I personally feel they are a very cheesy way to emulate real strategic decision making.

Lets force people to pick from a list of things, the few things that they desire most and as a consequence the others, which may be very good, will be forever lost.

Things like this include Civ 5's religion and civics as well as XCOMS promotion system, and strategic game (come on guys. You let a game from '93 beat your modern remake in the strategy view)

I feel genuine strategic decision making should have consequences that are real, and often unrelated to the mechanic at hand. This also killed the ability for a civ to change its government, since its now basically a bonuses system.

Just be happy that, as bad as it is to have the civics and religion based off of this, XCOM's entire strategic game is nothing but this. Rather then engage UFO's ourselves in a interactive globe we are forced to pick one of three missions each time with zero ability to react to the ones we don't pick. LAME

 

[Emperor Giulio]

Civilization IV's religion system was better because it had played deeper into global politics. The state religion that you chose had deep implications of who were your friends and enemies. This allowed people who didn't produce a religion themselves, to have a still significant role in those matters.

 

[tomtom5858]

Civilization IV's religion system was better because it had played deeper into global politics. The state religion that you chose had deep implications of who were your friends and enemies. This allowed people who didn't produce a religion themselves, to have a still significant role in those matters.

It also tied in with the tech tree. In CiV, it's better, because you actually have to work for it. +2FPT isn't going to cut it. You want religion, work for it or you won't get it. CIV, you get it by researching, which you do anyways.

 

[Emperor Giulio]

It also tied in with the tech tree. In CiV, it's better, because you actually have to work for it. +2FPT isn't going to cut it. You want religion, work for it or you won't get it. CIV, you get it by researching, which you do anyways.

True, but I think Civ IV, it was more realistic. For example, Christianity did not start in Europe, but it was still adopted by Europeans who used it in theocracies throughout history. Christianity was still a powerful political tool, and a staple of their culture, despite the fact they did not create it.

 

[wigwam]

Civilization IV's religion system was better because it had played deeper into global politics. The state religion that you chose had deep implications of who were your friends and enemies. This allowed people who didn't produce a religion themselves, to have a still significant role in those matters.

In my opinion, the only good things about Civ 4's religion system were that it handled multisectarianism and secularism well (much better than Civ 5, which basically doesn't handle them at all) and that, as you say, it made religion important even for civs that didn't found their own and allowed those civs to be religiously influential.

Unfortunately, religion's role in politics was too deep and too long-lasting; all the Buddhist nations and all the Jewish nations would hate each other long after most of them went secular, just because of accumulated modifiers from past wars, offending each other's allies, etc. etc. (of course, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism are the only important religions in Civ 4, being the first three to come along). On the whole, religion in Civ 5 is a lot more engaging and a lot more variable from game to game. I just wish it wasn't tied so tightly to its founding civ.

 

[the343danny]

I'm still siding with Civ IV, by a huge longshot. I'm hoping Brave New World would change that, but I doubt it.

Off the top of my head (because I haven't played Civ in quite a while), I have 5 main problems with Civ V: the AI, economy, 1upt, diplomacy, and the modding capability.

The AI is insane and it feels like "human like" AI is just an excuse for an awful one, because it is just as likely to win as the Civ 4 one outside of the (IMO) broken UN victory. They never win through war EVER unless they do a huge bum rush towards the player, do surprise cultural victories, or once in a blue moon launch a space shuttle. All of those things were what the Civ 4 AI did as well, and I'm pretty sure even Jon Shafer himself admitted to the issues with trying to make a "human like" competitive AI. My main issue with the AI is that it has no sense of loyalty or friendship and every single one of them backstabs the player some point in the game. That really breaks my Civ immersion, since I dont play to just kill everything, but to make a civilization with its own allies and its own enemies, almost roleplaying as I play. I can't do that at all and the game no longer feels like I was making alternate history, which is really what got me hooked in Civ 4. This should be fairly easy to change if the devs wanted to.

The economy is a little weird in Civ 5. Everybody agrees that trading posts are god awful compared to the cottage/commerce system. That and several other things makes sure I never feel like I am building up my civilization; my country never feels "developed" because all every single city needs is several turns to get it running. Developing my country just doesnt feel the same as it did in Civ 4. I'm hoping the new expansion fixes this.

The 1upt system was really disappointing. As excellent as the current system sounded at first, it was horrible in practice IMO. There are not enough tiles to warrant the type of combat system Shafer had planned and especially later, it just becomes a giant cluster****. Every single AI tile seems to be occupied by a unit and it really becomes a hassle to even organize my armies, considering how awful path finding and those sorts of things are. Limited resources didn't do a thing because theres far too many resources and the bulk of your army later on consists of 0 resource infantry anyways. This is unfortunately never going to change in this game.

Diplomacy is a little botched and it was like that in Civ 4 as well. Its really annoying having to renew open borders etc, and not having trade maps option is really stupid. There is no vassal system which I loved in Civ 4, since I much prefer to have a big confederation type empire with their own independent armies which I don't have to micromanage. Rest of the diplomacy issue is just due to AI issues. Should be easily fixable.

What made Civ 4 for me were mods like Rise of Legends and Fall From Heaven. Unfortunately, it seems that modding is dying on the forums due to lack of support from Firaxis and of course, the awful steam workshop that simply steals potential forum goers and modders. Steam workshop has terrible infrastructure and theres no way there can be any large scale mod projects can arise from such a place; the forums like this one are required for such things to happen. Nothing will change here ever for Civ 5, and quite possibly forever.


Of the five things mentioned here, two should be easily fixable and one of them will be fixed one way or another, through mods or expansions. There are many great things about Civ 5 but this game killed off my Civ era of my life. I still think the game has lots of potential and is salvageable, and it definitely has improved over time, though G&K was kind of a big letdown. I think one day, if Firaxis supports this game enough, it will surpass Civ 4 in a big way, outside of its modding potential of course. Then again, judging by most company's methods these days, Civ 6 would come out earlier before Civ 5 is properly fixed up.

 

[jjkrause84]

Still, I can't help but thinking that perhaps those who fell in love with Civ via IV hold that as their Civ ideal because it was their first love, whereas the same would apply to people like me who first found V. After all, I have yet to hear of someone who started with V then went to IV and thinks IV is better.

As far as I can tell there really are not many like that out there. Most of the Civ 4 fanatics (if I can say that) are long time players that started out on I or II. Of course, Civ 5 has plenty 'old school' supporters, too.

 

[jjkrause84]

In my opinion, the only good things about Civ 4's religion system were that it handled multisectarianism and secularism well (much better than Civ 5, which basically doesn't handle them at all) and that, as you say, it made religion important even for civs that didn't found their own and allowed those civs to be religiously influential.

Unfortunately, religion's role in politics was too deep and too long-lasting; all the Buddhist nations and all the Jewish nations would hate each other long after most of them went secular, just because of accumulated modifiers from past wars, offending each other's allies, etc. etc. (of course, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism are the only important religions in Civ 4, being the first three to come along). On the whole, religion in Civ 5 is a lot more engaging and a lot more variable from game to game. I just wish it wasn't tied so tightly to its founding civ.

Agreed. If Civ 5 could manage multi-sectarianism it would really be a great religion system (although I'm actually still unsure about the 'bonuses'...I don't like that everythign ni Civ 5 is about getting the arbitrary bonus. It is one of the things that makes the game feel, well, gamey).

 

[Emperor Giulio]

Civilization IV had a really cool intro video (an intro to the start of a game, not the one before the main menu). I wish Civ V had something similar, but the civ specific narration is cool nonetheless. I really enjoyed the music, as well as Lenard Nimoy's narration.

I hope the include the original Civ theme in Brave New World.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZlWmYe8HM4

 

[Sincro]

I'm a longtime player of the Civ Franchise, starting with numero uno, all the way to CiV G&K. This post will not discuss BNW, since what little I know about it tells me I'll probably despise it.

I would also like to state that I've never been a top player, nor really even wanted to become one. I currently have over 300 hours at CiV, and I play 90% of my games at Prince level. Some earlier Civ games I played at King, but I prefer to play at a low enough level to have multiple playstyle options. I don't want to be locked into a set routine that must be followed, and that's not a complaint about CiV, the same can be said about playing the top difficulty levels for almost any game in the franchise.

With that said, I enjoy CiV a lot. There are some things I love, some things I hate, and some things I wish the game had.

Things I love:
Innate city defense. Truly awesome. While I still have to worry about a random barb walking up and pillaging my tiles, or taking my worker if I'm not paying attention, I no longer have to sweat them taking my cities.
Ranged attack units. Fairly awesome. I am of the opinion that non-vehicle ranged units should all be range 1, but I digress. A great addition.
Great person generation. NO more city poisoning and then having the dice come up to generate that 1% chance of a great artist when you had a 99% chance at a great scientist.


Things I hate:
Not being able to choose which tile a city 'expands' to from culture.
Espionage. All of it. I'd delete the system entirely. I literally put one spy in my cap, 1 spy in the cap of the civ I'm fighting, and 1 spy to use as a spotter for my artillery/bombers.
AI settling patterns. I don't mind that the AI will, if left alone and given enough time, settle every single scrap of land available. I mind the AI deliberately ignoring better terrain in order to settle as close as possible to the player, then punishing the player diplomatically for being too close to each other.
Accelerated faith costs for buildings, missionaries and inquisitors. Makes little sense. It doesn't cost triple to build a barracks (or a temple for a better comparison) in the modern age, why does it cost triple for a pagoda?

Things I'd change:
Bring back the tactical layer, so we can draw and plan stuff out.
Allow player to choose city culture expansion tile.
Allow purchasing of units in puppets, possibly with a puppet surcharge.
When a city is made a puppet, player can choose the puppet's focus. The only choices allowed are gold, culture and science. Once set, it cannot be changed.
Inquisitors have 2 charges. Costs 1 charge to purge heresy in a non-holy city, costs 2 charges to remove holy city status.
Unit stacking. One ranged unit can stack with one non-ranged unit can stack with 1 civilian. Limit 6 air units per city. Cannot stack a ranged sea unit with a ranged ground unit in a city. Best unit defends incoming attacks.
Forts and citadels can house air units. 3 in a fort, 6 in a citadel.
Forts can be built outside cultural borders. Anyone can use an unoccupied fort. They are owned by whoever is in them.
Change the entire archer line to range 1, sight 2. Longbow keeps range promo, others have it available. Same for other non siege units such as chariot archers, keshiks, et cetera. Max range possible for a non-siege unit is 2.
Change the entire siege line to range 2, sight 1, with a free range promo to artillery and rocket artillery. Cannons can take the range promo. Max range possible for a siege unit is 3.
Ship range is 2 for pre-industrial, 3 for industrial, and 4 for modern+. Ships can earn the range promotion as well.
City range is 1 at beginning of game, increasing to 2 at Mathematics, then increasing to 3 at dynamite. City sight remains as it is currently.
Change all ranged damage to splash damage. Damage is applied to all units in the tile. Cannot kill a unit. Exposed units can be damaged to 10%. Units in forts 25%, citadels/cities 50%. This applies to land, sea and air units. Nukes exempted.

I'm sure there's more, but that's enough for now. Clearly these are my opinions, and I don't expect anyone to agree with all of them, and expect many people will disagree with most or even all of them.

-S

 

[ivonbeton]

I also played all civ games. I recently started playing again with the DLC's. I love most of the changes. The interface is very well designed and intuitive. I like the combat system a lot more compared to civ4, but there are a few major kinks.

1. The biggest problem I have is how bad the AI is. Upping the difficulty doesn't make them smarter, it just gives them a huge advantage. I would love if the AI could challenge me on the field of battle without simply overrunning me with a horde of elephants by turn 50-100.
2. Making money and yielding a massive army is simply too easy. Purchase and upkeep costs should be a lot higher in my opinion.
3. It would be great if playing a diplomatic, cultural or even a religion focused civ could give you some ways of gaining a bit of extra science or even make it more feasible to play a peaceful civ on higher difficulties if played correctly. The diplomacy/culture/religion they all are too simple and have limited capabilities.

I'm still enjoying myself, but I'm finding that a lot of games look just like the next (atleast at higher difficulties) because I'm forced to go to war and make sure my science doesn't suffer.

EDIT: I agree with the person above me, espionage is just bad

 

[ivonbeton]

I'm still siding with Civ IV, by a huge longshot. I'm hoping Brave New World would change that, but I doubt it.

Off the top of my head (because I haven't played Civ in quite a while), I have 5 main problems with Civ V: the AI, economy, 1upt, diplomacy, and the modding capability.

The AI is insane and it feels like "human like" AI is just an excuse for an awful one, because it is just as likely to win as the Civ 4 one outside of the (IMO) broken UN victory. They never win through war EVER unless they do a huge bum rush towards the player, do surprise cultural victories, or once in a blue moon launch a space shuttle. All of those things were what the Civ 4 AI did as well, and I'm pretty sure even Jon Shafer himself admitted to the issues with trying to make a "human like" competitive AI. My main issue with the AI is that it has no sense of loyalty or friendship and every single one of them backstabs the player some point in the game. That really breaks my Civ immersion, since I dont play to just kill everything, but to make a civilization with its own allies and its own enemies, almost roleplaying as I play. I can't do that at all and the game no longer feels like I was making alternate history, which is really what got me hooked in Civ 4. This should be fairly easy to change if the devs wanted to.

The economy is a little weird in Civ 5. Everybody agrees that trading posts are god awful compared to the cottage/commerce system. That and several other things makes sure I never feel like I am building up my civilization; my country never feels "developed" because all every single city needs is several turns to get it running. Developing my country just doesnt feel the same as it did in Civ 4. I'm hoping the new expansion fixes this.

The 1upt system was really disappointing. As excellent as the current system sounded at first, it was horrible in practice IMO. There are not enough tiles to warrant the type of combat system Shafer had planned and especially later, it just becomes a giant cluster****. Every single AI tile seems to be occupied by a unit and it really becomes a hassle to even organize my armies, considering how awful path finding and those sorts of things are. Limited resources didn't do a thing because theres far too many resources and the bulk of your army later on consists of 0 resource infantry anyways. This is unfortunately never going to change in this game.

Diplomacy is a little botched and it was like that in Civ 4 as well. Its really annoying having to renew open borders etc, and not having trade maps option is really stupid. There is no vassal system which I loved in Civ 4, since I much prefer to have a big confederation type empire with their own independent armies which I don't have to micromanage. Rest of the diplomacy issue is just due to AI issues. Should be easily fixable.

What made Civ 4 for me were mods like Rise of Legends and Fall From Heaven. Unfortunately, it seems that modding is dying on the forums due to lack of support from Firaxis and of course, the awful steam workshop that simply steals potential forum goers and modders. Steam workshop has terrible infrastructure and theres no way there can be any large scale mod projects can arise from such a place; the forums like this one are required for such things to happen. Nothing will change here ever for Civ 5, and quite possibly forever.


Of the five things mentioned here, two should be easily fixable and one of them will be fixed one way or another, through mods or expansions. There are many great things about Civ 5 but this game killed off my Civ era of my life. I still think the game has lots of potential and is salvageable, and it definitely has improved over time, though G&K was kind of a big letdown. I think one day, if Firaxis supports this game enough, it will surpass Civ 4 in a big way, outside of its modding potential of course. Then again, judging by most company's methods these days, Civ 6 would come out earlier before Civ 5 is properly fixed up.

I agree with a lot of what you said. Allthough I still prefer to play civ5 over civ4 because I just really like how easy to use the interface is. I think the 1upt system is actually pretty good (better than stacks of doom), but that it just needs some refining. You are right, especially at higher difficulties and later stages, it feels like the game lacks tiles to do a proper battle. But that is, imo, a problem with the economy in civ5. It's way too easy to make money and just spam buy/produce units. You can put a unit on every tile and have no problems making money.

So the unit maintainance should be a lot higher. Because this might make it harder to defend remote cities, I feel like any unit garisoned in a city should be free of upkeep. Just spitballing here, but I feel like the 1upt make combat more tactical and fun and that it could really work if the game got some updates.

 

[panurgy]

My biggest issue with Civ 5 is that there seems to be an optimal strategy that the game is designed for (as can be seen by AI behavior). Previous games IIRC, and Civ4-BTS in particular, is endlessly engaging to me because there was no such thing, and a variety of strategies could be developed, then mixed and adapted to the particular game being played (without knowing in advance whether the solution was "correct"). Sometimes they required backup plans. Sometimes you would aim for a certain victory, and have to eke out another (or lose).

Tic-tac-toe and checkers aren't interesting (to me), because they are "optimal strategy" games (i.e., there's a specific formula for the best possible outcome). Chess and Go aren't. Part of that is due to complexity, and part due to design. There are games like Risk that are in-between, but fall too close to the "optimal strategy" constraint to be interesting (again, to me).

In a metaphorical sense, Civ 4 had a very large, nearly limitless number of worlds, while Civ 5 only has a single, static "map". The apparent diversity through randomization in Civ 5 is in actuality just overlaying different texture maps over the same model.

So Civ 4-BTS was a strategy exploration game, where you could continuously search for better solutions. In Civ 5 the solution is essentially known, and it's a matter of becoming more efficient in implementing it. That, or you can explore sub-optimal solutions. Either way, Civ 5 ends up being unsatisfying.

 

[KrzTeKILL]

I think you all should read this, http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JonS...the_Design_of_Civ_5.php?utm_source=feedburner

It is a blog written by Civ V's lead designer/producer or whatever. He talks design failures in Civ V.

He brings up strategic depth. The biggest problem with Civ V is the lack of changing strategies through the game. Previous Civ games you could dramatically alter your economy, social policies, diplomatic situation and religion depending on your situation. This added a deep strategic layer to the game. Civ V is a train ride that you don't really do anything on, Civ 4 was more like a thinking experience.

I believe combat in Civ V was supposed to add some thinking but it didn't because it's so broken. I find combat in Civ V is like what playing Chess with double the number of pieces would be like. The AI doesn't have a hope of playing it properly because the board is full and nothing can move. I don't even bother trying to think about it because it's always just a huge mess.

Now the Civ V devs are trying to add strategic depth ad-hoc. Features like religion, espionage and international trade are now replacing the strategy that was lost in the original Civ V. These features are a lot more dynamic than the ones in vanilla Civ. They do this poorly though, because they are clearly ad-hoc and integrate poorly with other systems. Espionage is notorious for being difficult to implement in 4X games, but Civ V's is the newest, and one of the worst. I've played 4-5 games and still don't understand religion, it seems to cost a lot of gold and hammers and most of what faith does is make more faith.

In saying this, Civ V does have good features. If you blended Civ 5 and 4 you would get a good game. 1UPT is a good idea, but needs to be seriously modified. Tall/Wide was possible in earlier Civ games but Civ V has made it explicit and easier.

On another note:

A big reason long term fans hate Civ V so much is the amount it changed. Civ 1 -> 4 were all small iterations and developments on features. Culture, social policies, trade, espionage, great people, weather, spaceships, wonder videos, systems that contain expansion, specialists were all added and developed throughout the series. With each release it was always very exciting to see how the old features have been iterated and improved. Civ V broke from this line, and in a lot of ways it is a reboot rather than a continuation of the Civ series. It was a real stab in the back to have your series of over a decade so brutally changed, and for the worse.