They already did - it’s called Civ 5. 
Yes I agree with this - I like the fact that I have to focus my cities and be clear what it is I’m achieving and plan accordingly, I don’t think this is a failure of the game at all and don’t understand why people are so keen to have the production timescales massaged upwards to make it easier to build things.
The only thing I read was a liberated Civ will always vote for you at the UN for that kind of victory. This is true even if you are at war with them.
It is the only way to get a Civ to vote for you else they always vote for themselves. If you want the UN victory you have to liberate a few…I do not think all the City-States and yourself alone are ever sufficient to win a UN vote.
Every city-state is one vote, so if you’re allied with a bunch of them a diplomatic victory is simple. I’m also pretty sure that liberated civilizations don’t get to vote at all, but I’d have to load a save to be sure (and I don’t want to.)
From the manual (p117…have it saved on my PC so no link…emphasis mine):
You’re right. I checked on my save. Liberated Civs are listed down with the city-states so I missed them the first time around.
That’s completely untrue - I’ve won several diplomatic victories purely on the strength of my relations with city states. On the larger maps with investment in patronage and a healthy cash flow it’s pretty much a given that you can win that victory, particularly so if you’re playing as Greece or Siam.
Indeed, and it’s too easy to win this way. You can just build the UN and then 1 turn before a vote just pay off all the city states.
Yeah, all city states and civs having equal votes is kind of silly. Maybe do it by population with a slight bonus for city states or something.
I’ve decided that I’m going to shelve Civ V until some expansions come out; there’s just something missing from the whole experience that I can’t put my finger on; not helped by the flaws in the Diplomacy system and just a feeling that something is lacking.
Still, I’m confident a decent patch or two and an expansion should sort it out, then I can get back into it. If I haven’t finished with Fallout: New Vegas by then. 
Looks like Steam just finished downloading the first big patch.
Patch notes. Spoilered for brevity.
UI
Fix for production prompt that sometimes appears with newly created puppet states that could stop the player from being able to end the turn.
Aircraft banner corrections - now when you rebase an aircraft, the number will move with it.
Resource icons now come up with Ctrl-R again, instead of sharing the same button with Build Roads.
Selecting a great general will no longer cause yield icons to appear.
Added option to disable auto-unit cycling.
Fix for full-screen game when running dual monitors. Previously, the curser could scroll off the “open” side, and not be able to scroll the map in that direction.
Misc additional fixes to mouse controls, and other interface issues.
Rounded out financial information in the Economic Overview screen.
Details now provided on the amount of gold provided by each city, the cost of buildings in each city, etc.
Auto-populate save menu with save file name
Allow selection of other cities by hex from within the city screen
Added detailed trade route info to Economic Overview screen
Added new tab to the Economic Overview Screen: “Resources & Happiness.”
Added option to activate the mp score list in single player (for “always up” score similar to Civ IV.)
The Annex/Puppet/Raze popup now indicates how much extra Unhappiness will be assumed with each action.
If there are less than 5 buildings still needed to construct a National Wonder, the production popup tool-tip now lists which cities lack them.
Added Yield & Culture tool-tip info to the production popup.
Tweak information on the Global Politics tab in the Diplomacy Overview screen.
MODDING
Category list now displays correctly
“Installed” panel now displays ALL versions of a mod but prevents the user from enabling multiple versions.
GAMEPLAY
Workers - Added option to force workers to ignore manually made improvements (so they don’t change what you decide was best for a plot).
Workers - Fixed bug where number of turns to complete were incorrect in build action button tool-tip.
Economy - Fixed bug where players could disband a single unit, and not see the economic return until disbanding 1 more.
Economy - Increased city wealth setting to 25%
Economy - Multiple fixes to the way trade-routes are tabulated and recognized.
Economy - Can now sell Buildings in a city (to help lower maintenance for obsolete buildings later in the game).
Trade - Found and corrected a Trade problem that could cause your Resource inventory to multiply.
City States - Fixed a bug where you could not gift aircraft to city states.
Military - Medic promotion now only provides healing bonus for adjacent units.
Military - Fix for Minuteman movement.
Military - Correct promotions for “archer-like” units (horse archers, chariots).
Military - Embarked units will no longer slow enemy land units
Military - Improved unit cycling logic. Camera will jump around much less.
Balance - Engineers +1 hammer
Balance - Disbanding units now provides only 10% of their production cost in gold.
Request - Enable “one more turn” button if you lose, but are still alive.
AI
Military - Better handling of unit need (navy vs land, etc.).
Military - AI will tend to build ships to deal with blockaded cities more often
Military - Corrected an issue hampering movement of AI armies, especially when in close proximity to enemy forces
Diplomacy - AI will be more reluctant to offer or accept open border agreements with more powerful opponents.
Diplomacy - Fix for never ending deals (peace, research agreements, etc).
City - City specialization and city focus improvements.
City - Cities that are Avoiding Growth will not grow while that option is selected
Workers - Priority of trading posts reduced, and rebalanced priorities on other improvements
Workers - Improved the path-finding mechanic when building route-to roads improved, including a large performance increase when evaluating road-pathing.
City - Make sure Puppets don’t construct buildings that require Resources.
City - Add a Puppet city strategy that turns off training buildings and emphasizes gold.
Military - Defensive tactical AI update. When you are at war and threatening an enemy city, the AI will better utilize the garrison, as well as the surrounding terrain in defense of the target city.
MULTIPLAYER
Exploit - Fix for gifting unit exploit
Chat - Color-coding, sound alerts, etc., added for in-game chat system, including a larger window.
Deals - Additional deal validation put in place to verify deals before they are committed
MISC
Research treaties that end because you declare war will no longer grant the free tech
Save/Load - Fix for corrupted saves being experienced by some players in late-game.
Map - Huge map crash-during-load fix that were reported on some specific systems.
Map - Terrain caching fix that could cause problems for certain video cards (the “glowing red orbs” seen on the map are an indicator of this).
Map - Fix for the low res terrain that appears the first time the game is run (terrain tiles would not load in anything but low-res the first time you play on some computer configurations)
Strategic View - Crash fix for units rendering in background.
Strategic View - Fix for selecting units either standing on a city plot, or garrisoned in the city plot.
Eyefinity - Better handling of leader scenes when using Eyefinity displays.
Tutorials - Many tutorial tweaks and adjustments.
Multiple crash fixes.
Taller than wide map crash fix.
Thanks, looks like a lot of good fixes and improvements:
I should have previewed – scooped again!
What kind of scores are you guys getting at what difficulty levels? I feel like I could do better by specializing my cities with more forethought.
My first game was done as rome on Warlord (3) difficulty - got a domination victory in 227 turns with a score of 3193.
Tried going for a cultural victory at the same difficulty level with Alexander, ended up with a score of 2994 after 383 turns.
Stepped up the difficulty to prince and tried India. Ended up with a technology victory in 415 turns with a score of 1716.
Had my best game still on prince - tried Persia and got a domination victory in 248 turns with a score of 3266. That was the game where I stacked golden ages through the last 80 or so turns of the game.
Just now finished my second game as alexander, with the biggest map and most city states possible with a dissapointing score of 1005. Diplomatic victory after 353 turns. The map kinda sucked - I eventually had 20+ allies at once, but only 3 luxury resources amongst them.
Is that any good? I’ve never been great at the civ games, so I don’t really know. I guess it’s time for me to step it up to king.
How can you tell if Steam downloaded the patch? I’m looking… not seeing anything.
It’ll automatically do it in the background. If it couldn’t for some reason, it’ll tell you to wait a few minutes while it updates. So if you can play it, it’s updated.
That’s what I thought too, but it didn’t work for me. I started a new game last night and it was on the old version (1.0.0.20). I realized while I was playing that it was the old version because I couldn’t sell buildings. When I finished the game several hours later, I saw that Steam had updated it (1.0.0.62). I had disabled the Introduction so it sits there with a blank screen accessing the harddrive. I thought it was updating and I went ahead with my game thinking .20 was the update.
The version number is at the bottom of the main menu screen.
I’ve decided to put the game away for a little bit. In the last two weeks I’ve logged 41 hours…that’s way too much time spent on a video game.
I tried a single-city civilization last night (French, Prince, random…). I made a critical mistake and built my city near water, but not on water. It meant I couldn’t build ships to explore or workboats to improve the water tiles. This shot my strategy since my goal was to explore the world and befriend all of the maritime city-states. But I was stubborn and went with it anyway.
I ran out of time with two social policies to go (and the Utopia project). What bugged me was that Russia was awarded the game since they had more points, but other than research technology they had done nothing toward the victory goals. I was at war with India for the entire game because he wanted too much for peace and yet he wasn’t killing any of my units. I guess my cold war with India killed my points.
110 hours since it launched for me. That is some serious time sinking isn’t it? :o
Visit the civfanatics forum. I’ve already commented on this and other things there various times so I’ll try to be to the point here.
The AI sucks balls. Sweaty, flea infested monkey balls. Th game is very weak, and not engaging. Nothing you do will make the AI “nice” to you. War is your only option, face it. There is no real diplomacy in this game.