Hi Ita Bear,
I think it can be worth to have a try with Civ 3 - and it is only a step back in the number, but not in the game play and fun this version of the Civ series can provide to you. At present in the GOG summer sale, Civ 3 Complete can be bought for € 1,29, so if you don´t like it, this was no big waste of money.
... or you may find the fewer decisions to be a relief.
In my eyes this is one of the key reasons to discuss. Here is the scan of a part of page 34 of the Troy Goodfellow interview with Sid Meier (SM) and Soren Johnson in the "Chronicles of Civilization":
Unfortunately starting with Civ IV this important fact became to be ignored and more and more additional 'minor trees' were added (per example for unit experience and for governments and so on) and with Civ V and VI this became even much more intense. The question is: Brings this massive amount in additional micromanagement really such a lot of additional fun when playing the game ?
For me it is not worth those additional tons of micromanagement (of course other civers can see this different), but when reading the statement above by Sid Meier, I think his philosophy would tend more to throw this kind of micromanagement out of the game than to add more and more of this not necessairy stuff. And for those, who say that it would be worth to burden this additional micromanagement to the game, the question would arise, if there wouldn´t be a better way to achieve a more interesting result in the game without adding such additional "trees". Per example, wouldn´t it be better to improve and use the present options in C3C to make combat more attractive (movement handicaps, stealth attack, king flag settings and so on) than to install an additional 'new tree for unit experiences'?
The main reason for me to stay with Civ 3 is, that I don´t like the - in my eyes - for a strategy game not fitting 'table top presentation' of Civ 4 - Civ 6. The philosophy in the Civ series was - and in my eyes still should be - that all actions can be seen clearly and without any problems on the map. Units laying in different directions all over the map kill all the fun for me in the game. Symbols, lenses and 2D maps to explain, what should be seen normally clearly on the map in a good Civ game without these additional explanations show, that the graphical approach in Civ 4 -6 collides massively with the original idea about Civ.
Ita Bear, I made a C3C mod called CCM 2.50, that in about 1 1/2 years was downloaded more than 3.100 times and could be interesting for you, as it incorporates a lot of features of Civ 4, coming from the skillful analysis from Soren Johnson in his instruction manual of Civ 4 Vanilla. That´s why at page 1 of the thread of this mod I wrote: CCM was also helped by Soren Johnson´s skillful analysis of Civ III gaming elements at the end of the handbook for Civ IV. In that sense: The end of Civ IV is the start of Civ III CCM.
Besides many other new features this mod holds a different - and in my eyes much better working - solution of the ICS problem, what could be even more interesting for civers, who focus on the building aspect of a civ game. I think it also holds a better implantation of the different world religions and many other features like eraspecific different leaders in a game. The units in C3C in my eyes look much better than those of Civ 4. The next version of this mod will be combined with the Flintlock patch that was addressed in that thread in a former post.
The download of this mod can be found here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/authors/civinator.58536/ and the introduction post of the mod can be found here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ccm2-epic-mod.625812/