Why does everyone hate CIV5?
Very few actually "hate" it. The latter term is often used in a loose sense in defensive reaction to someone not liking it, but hate, no thats rare. There has always been criticism on Version changes, particularly the knee jerk one about people always generalising over changes to prior Versions.
There is a lot of truth in the latter, many did just that, and soon after patches etc all settled. However this time round we have a different scenario, and previous bland assumptions about so called knee jerk moaning dont cut it. The game has been stripped down incredibly, by direct acknowledgement of the dev team.
The Culture and Spaceship options have been reduced to almost brain dead options, and the focus has been on military changes. Shafer stated explicitly that a lot of what they considered to be surplus and fluff has been stripped. Significantly in that "fluff" very little of it was militay.
From a gaming perspective it has - indesputedly - been simplified greatly. From a mass market appeal basis it has been much improved. So it depends where you sit in the whole gaming/warmongering/mass market camps as to wether or its all for the good. Many like me, have not come down on it in 15+ years of version changes, patches and packs. This time round it really is different, even Shafer acknowledged in a Polycast that one Primary aim of the Version release was "widening the fanbase".
A Version release success financially is never really known until the next release as the main income comes from pre-sale/those who dont really know the version. At present we are "living "off Civ IV's generally held phenominal reputation. I strongly suspect that by Civ 6 time, it will tank in Sales as mass market games need much more than a cut down Civ can give, and by then the shallow nature and low repeatability of Civ V in a traditional gamer sense will be well in the open. Such an evolution is common as long successful games get to aka version 4/5/6/7 et al - always exceptions of course - but by in large they morph into a mass market format. Civ has started down that sad road.
Regards
Zy