I honestly tried 6 after departing from beloved 4 and 5, but couldn’t get into it. It was a death by a thousand cuts, more precisely a thousand annoyances. Reduced movement rate (reason number 1 for AI stupidity if you ask me). The AI was terrible at combat tactical movement to begin with and only shined through brute forcing. But then combat competence requirement went through the roof as the increased requirement for moves (on AI’s part) made any aspirations for AI combat competence simply unrealistic. There is a lesson here somewhere - sometimes Simple is best.
And then workers. I always liked that particular abstraction as it had creative venue. Now I understand Firaxis is getting rid of them entirely in 7, while many people are cheering. I must be getting old and impervious to change… although I must admit, by lategame my army of workers was getting tiring to manage. Sometimes I even automated some of them!
I am of course more than curious about the future of civ. Each of the iterations had at least one special thing going for it. Part I had simplicity, part 4 had depth. Someday Firaxis can stumble upon perfect civ by accident. Or maybe they already did?
Civ 4 is still the best. 1UPT is tedious, especially when it comes to combat. In Civ 5 it was unbearable. Civ 6 improved things a little, but I just get over how ugly the map looks with so much unit spam, particularly all the unit banners. I hate how the banners artwork don't match/blend with the map scenery. Its an eyesore, and it worse the farther you zoom out. I remember a mod in Civ 4 that gave you real national flags for the unit banners. That was nice, because it blended better with the scenery and was more immersive.
I really miss Stack-of-Doom. The AI was so much more challenging with SoDs. And there were still tactics involved... you still had attack-order, chokepoints, naval drops, amphibious attacks, bombing raids. The major tactical difference I guess was that CIv 4 siege units are more like suicide bombers/goblin sappers/banelings than actual siege units, and archers were almost purely defensive, rather than for bombardment.
What I also liked about Civ 4 was that the units were BIG, so you could see the detail didn't need the banners/icons to tell what unit they were, especially once they made the units culturally specific. In Civ 5 the units got so small, the artwork was wasted because you couldn't even see it unless you zoomed all the way in, but then that was too close to actually play and see what was going on around the map. I hate being forced to use the ugly unit banner icons to tell what unit it is... very immersion breaking.
Managing workers is lots of fun in the early game, particularly mods that allow you to capture workers and settlers, but I like the idea of phasing them out, maybe even in the mid game, but certainly by the late game they are too tedious and should be phased out... especially since by then, as you say, we are automating them anyway.