Civ peaked at Civ 4 and all its expansions for me.

Yes, doomstacks were a problem, but hard pivoting all the way over to Civ 5's only one unit per tile led to a whole bunch of other bullshit in the opposite direction.

Humankind ... just has better inter game system synergy, and those individual systems seem better thought out, more engaging and less... cheesable, exploitable, to a great extent due to how everything meshes together.

The first few months after launch absolutely were rough, with some pretty significant bugs in specific, but often crucial scenarios... but they got ironed out, and the result is great.

Also a lot of the initial backlash was from the pollution / global warming mechanic... they quickly added an option to just turn most of its effects off, but to me the entire thing read as a bunch of people being used to massively colonizing, industrializing and war mongering and then being angry that ... that has consequences.

Guess those people have trouble grasping the concept of an externality.

Oh well, they've all been filtered, recent steam reviews are 'very positive.'