I'm going to give my own two cents in this thread. I see this discussion is still fresh.
For one, B29's remarks are valid: Civ was always meant to be a tabletop chess with a coat of history on top of it, and the first three civs stick to this formula with no problems. This sort of simplicity, clear cut style, is an advantage.
But there is one thing that still makes me stick to the old, and "tried", in this regard. I even play Europa Universalis 2 because of this:
1 - For one, I'm a late 90's kid. So the nostalgia and sentimental factor peak at late 90's, early 00's games. That said this is not an absolute. But then there's factor 2:
2 - I'm a slow guy, and I'm also old fashioned. I can't keep pace with how just dazingly and stupidly fast modern software develops itself: for the same reason, I've ditched MS Office for LibreOffice, because it's free, and it has all the in-built functionalities that I need as a purely domestic user (no advertising, just saying plainly here
). No excessive complexity. But back when I used Office, I would keep old versions running long after M$ released something else, and I would also keep the old hardware. Even when I had the bucks to buy something new, hey, lemme tell you a secret: when I was a kid, I learned to use typewriters. And I kept using them until I was 21 to write my own texts.
I guess you could send me back on a time machine to the 50's and 60's, in some place like rural Idaho or whatever. I would fit in nicely. That's my kind of everyday pace.
The same thing happens with games: I like the clearcut, well tried, "old but good". Civ2, Civ3, with their tried and tested chess tabletop approach, feel like good old fashioned Civ.
I was never capable of keeping up with the pace of Civ development after 4. Sorry. I'm just a slow guy. I'm astonished to hear that in just 10 years, they made two new civs. Sorry that's just too fast. LOL.
There's also the fact I began to play, get hooked on, and prefer actively the Paradox games, esp. CK2 which is one of my all time favorites. I just they think they're different, but I still like them more, but I keep returning to Civ because of difference, nostalgia, etc...