Great graphics and the new Hex Grid can't keep this stripped down game from failing.
The bad: City states, No top down view of your towns, No great wonders completion videos, Shallow gameplay.
I played this game for several hours in the same delighted stupor that Civ games put me in, until I realized that I was already at 100 B.C. already. I set up the game with time set to epic and the map on large. The large maps in this game are the size of small maps from the previous games.
The supposed drudgery of Civ 3 was like a dream come true. Tweaking production vs. gold balance each turn and directly managing irate citizens was beyond fun. Then Civ 4 took most of the dirty work out, but it was still playable and fun. Unfortunately Civ V is so dumbed down and straightforward that someone with an IQ of 80 can now beat it without a mental strain.
City states are a complete joke. They only give you quests to rid them of barbarians when your whole army is on the other edge of the world map. To gain favor with them by giving gifts of gold or soldiers barely raise their friendly meter at all. Since there is no cultural sway in this game you can literally have a city state surrounded by your citys so that they are living off your improvements, yet still they will not ally with you. If you try to send workers into their territory to improve their land then they get angry with you! WTC!
The unstackable war units is great and makes you feel like you actually have to strategize with troop movements.
I have this game simply because I am waiting for some user generated mods to be released that change the core game back to the way it was meant to be. The graphics of this game and the hex pattern are great and if you were to couple that with in depth empire building similar to Civ 3 than you have a game that gets a 10/10
because of the convenient mod browser and installer they added into the game, I will know to the minute when the modders with uber skills complete their civ maps and tweaks. Unfortunately it will probably be a few months after release before Firaxis releases their in depth modding application for this game so my modding dreams are unobtainable for a while.