Might just be me, but I kinda do the same thing each game - feels like everything is on rails. When you meet a civ, you know 99% of the time wether or not you are gonna be at war or peace. Chances are that you will be at war for some stupid reason like a landlocked player meeting Norway. Replayability is gone for me sadly. Many other things I don't like, but replayability is kinda important.
Civ5 had replayability from day 1 - regardless of buggy and bland release. I hated civ5 at release, but still played it. I didn't hate civ6 at release, but I just stopped playing entirely because I know what each game will be like. Funny how that works...
So combine the lack of updates and themepark gameplay and you got one super disappointed customer over here. I definately don't consider civ6 a grand strategy game...
This post shows very clearly that you don't know how the game works, and then I do not mean in that you do the same thing every game (which could be the case), I mean that you assume for certain that a certain agenda will net you war or peace. Because that's just not true. I am right now landlocked and next to Norway in my game, I met him around turn... 20 I think. We were best buddies, got a declaration of friendship, I never heard anything about his agenda. Around turn... 70 I think it'll have been, I conquered a city-state that was one tile away from coast, which was the first city where I could build a harbor. And
then, when I could build ships, Harald started bothering me about his agenda. Still, however, I'm doing quite fine, as I got a relation boost from the declaration of friendship. That said, I think I'll let the relation degrade and wait to see wheter he declares war on me, as he's getting quite strong, but I kinda wanna win. But it's very doable to manipulate diplomacy to get friends in the right places or even become friends with
everyone in some games (I know at least Victoria managed to do so on deity, alliance with every civ met, and there may be other people around here). And then Harald's agenda can be a hard one to meet, as you may not want to invest in a navy. Just compare with, say, Peter (be ahead in science and culture), Cleopatra (have a strong army) or Trajan (have a large empire). All three agendas that may be hard early, but if you're not meeting them later on you're doing something wrong anyways.
The one thing that
is very typical to Civ VI and that
will repeat itself most games, is an early declaration of war, but this is intended and, in my opinion, a good aspect of the game, as indeed war was viewed differently in ancient times, and was therefore both not judged so harsh and more common. However, all that means is that, on lower difficulties, you need to keep your first two units kinda close to your capital (which is also needed because of barbarians) while on higher difficulties it's best to rush Archery and 3 slingers that you then upgrade for 90 gold. That's as much as a generic start this game has, however. 20 turns and then it wildly diverges even on deity.