but 98% of the time they're at least civil
That's quite the point, isn't it

(here a longterm fan who shortened the DOS folder name for Civ I as "civil" instead of "civ"

).
Being a long term fan of several franchises, I cannot but echo many of the ideas of posts on this thread.
- After all, everything is business. As far as they would liker (or not), Civ developers are working for 2K, not for us fans. So many of their actions are constrained by 2K strategy.
- Even if they were indie developers, they cannot care the whims and whishes for such a big community. The difference is, as indies they would do what they think is best, as employees, they would do what 2K approves.
- Communities have often overhyped expectations of what can be done in a reasonable amount of time and want it all: good AI, good graphics, and short turn times in a low-end computer. Of course, an individual fan may not want all of this, depending on its circumstances, but saying the other things are not a request of the community is just lying to yourself.
- Keep in mind community is just a part of the potential market and while developers might care, producers/financers do not. You must be careful a toxic community may even kill of the game. I've been involved in the HoMM community for a long time too, and after the fiasco of the VI installement, I can tell the developers tried to approach the fans a bit on VII, which was in part a step in the improvement path. However, the high demands/criticism of the community killed this improvement opportunity and now all we are left with is with cheap mobile games (which the chinese seem to pay for more than a standard title).
- It's clear Civ VI is highly flawed, but as far as the comunity goes, it seems it is still enjoyable. Also, most of past games tend to have as well its share of bugs and exploits, just we were used to use/avoid them and not care as much about them now.