I really don't understand so much love for this game. I know that a lot of people start playing Civ with this game (i've started with Civ III and also played IV prior to V), and this create and emotional attachment to the game, but this game is one of the worst Civ games.

Apart from the traditional flaws from every Civ game, like some systems being either over simplified or a broken mess, or both (a good example in every single Civilization is Economy. Lacks depth in every game, while not being intuitive and is really weird. And every time, once you got the gimmick, is extremely easy to exploit with barely no thought put into), this game also have an awful slow pace, that don't seem to quite work with the simple design of Civilization games. Early game is heavily stalled, while Civ IV have a excellent and dynamic pace for comparison sake.

Most of the great additions were made by DLCs, and at the time the base game came in The Sims style, lacking a ton of content that should've come with the game.

Overall is not an bad exeperience (as you noticed by my grade) and you can definitely have the traditional civilization fun. The fact that now the civs feel way more different from each other was a extremely helpful to add some variation to the game (one of the few problems of Civ IV was the fact that every single gameplay felt like another one after a while), but definitely an hindered Civilization experience.