_Every_ Civ game is loathed on release, and beloved a few years later (generally after a bunch of expansions). It's how it works. I think Civ 2 was the last one for which this was _not_ the case, tbh (it was so clearly better than the original).
(I had missed that there was a new one out, might have to give it a go, so that I can moan about how it's worse than VI, and then forget about that in a couple of years.)
I never got into Civ6. The rules were too different from the prior games and I fail to adapt. My favorite is still civ5 but I also really liked 4. I did try playing civ2 again recently and it now feels too unstructured.
Civ 2 was great. I mostly skipped 3 and completely skipped 4, but have played 5 a fair bit through the years and still feel that Civ 2 was better. Not graphically, obviously, but the game mechanics evolved relatively little from 2 to 5 and in some cases not for the better (unit stacking??) Worse, Civ 5 games all turn out smaller and shorter than what I used to do in 2. Fewer cities, fewer units, smaller and shorter wars. Pity it's such a pain in the ass to run Civ 2 these days.
> Then there was another Civ where boats were not needed any more
6 & 7 (and maybe 5, I don't recall) don't require transports for land units because they now have the ability to "embark" with appropriate technology (In 7, this is from the beginning, but only on navigable rivers and coast), but boats are very much still important (well, on most map types.)
(I had missed that there was a new one out, might have to give it a go, so that I can moan about how it's worse than VI, and then forget about that in a couple of years.)