In Civ4, you could rotate the maps and even use free camera. In Civ4 there was a 3D model for every building. In Civ4 there were these trees called "pine trees" that actually cover much of the northern rim of the earth...... that are missing in Civ5.
In Civ5 the map might as well be the same technology as CivIII, because all you get is some lip gloss to the graphics like "shadows",,,, oooooh,,, water reflections,,,, oooooooh,,, and white fog instead of black fog ,,,,ooooohh,,,.
And for what? You needed a big graphics card that used as many resources and produced as much heat as my flight simulator.
I seriously suspect that back in 2010, most of us were addicted to eye candy. I think these days with the rise of mobile computing, we are starting to see through the addiction to graphics eye candy we had back then. We got the eye candy we wanted at the expense of being largely unable to play on huge maps.
Have you tried the mod that rotates a Civ5 map? The tree models in Civ5 are actually just almost flat 2D objects. No wonder they cut out map rotation because it would be embarrassing to them if you did rotate the map to see these ugly flat 2D trees on a 3D map in a graphics engine that was dated 2010 when 3D was already a mature technology.
We were conned. Drawn in with a gimmick of better graphics. We civ'ers are smarter now (I hope!)
To be positive, the maps in Civ5, not the graphics is what draws me in. They are spectacularly good especially once you fix the bug in maps like Continents plus where too many city states settle off-shore. I also like the leader heads, they have a lot of character.
Cheers