How do you feel about Civ VI? For me, the game is just too darn complex. I feel like they added way too many point economies to keep track of - amenities, housing, appeal, loyalty, and more. The emphasis on districts and adjacency bonuses makes me feel like I need to intensely micromanage my territory and place each district with a sense of finality because changing my mind is so expensive.

I also find the game's aesthetic to be a dissonant mess. While I can put up with a more cartoony style, the UI is just too busy. Not only are there a ton of icons and labels on the screen, it was like the designers wanted to emphasize the civilization's colors rather than readability. The map looks strange because of how cities, mountains, wonders, and district buildings are scaled for visibility. Individual buildings look bigger than cities and appear as tall as some mountains or larger than some terrain features. Overall, the game seems to lack a cohesive and congruent style and it's ugly to me.

All that being said, I did like the variety for city state bonuses, having great people be more diversified, and the fact that needing a specific tile to place a wonder upon made it so that a small number of cities did not contain an absurd amount of wonders within them. Ultimately, I hope they make Civ 7 a more streamlined game but keep some of the variety.

Civ games go through a cycle.

When they're first released there tends to be a lot of issues and gaps. Subsequent expansions tend to fill out those gaps. The expansions for Civ4 added a lot, for example.

I played at least 100 hours of Civ6 but honestly it didn't grab me. One issue (and this is a general issue with Civ games) is I tended to avoid war because it would totally bog down. A protracted war (if, say, you're going for a Domination victory) might take 3 full days to play (ignoring early Domination wins).

Anyway, I haven't played a ton of Civ6 since the expansions so can't comment on the current state. I know there are a few diehard fans online who stick to Civ5. I played less of Civ5 so have no opinion on 5 vs 6.

Civ6 does have some weirdness I wish it didn't (and maybe it's been fixed?). For example the price for creating districts is determined when you first create them so it's optimal to create them all early, cancel production and then build them much later to lock in a low price. I don't like this kind of micro-optimization being rewarded (even necessaary on higher difficulty levels).

I really enjoyed Beyond the Sword - particularly the random events and the choices you could make. Sadly, I've never managed to find a mod that made them more frequent or a mod for Civ V that introduced the concept without additional complexity around the mechanic. I forget the name of it, but one of the Civ V mods added random events but you had to make magistrates and save up points to be able to make a decision.

I'm pushing 5,000 hours on Civ V, and still enjoy it. I don't like VI. Like you, I find it too complex. In fact, I think it's just downright tedious. They jumped the shark with this one. I like the idea of districts in theory, but controlling happiness has gone from a hassle to a nightmare. And, if you lose control, and rebels appear, you will spend SCORES of turns repairing the damage. And the worst part about it, for me, is that turning down the difficulty makes cities grow faster, and exacerbates the problem!

I loved Civ 6, including its aesthetic (the music in particular was amazing).

But: the AI is dim-witted, especially in war; there is too little random chance; and combat tends to favor the defender. So once you get through the early game, you don't have to be afraid of your neighbors declaring war on you.

In contrast, in Civ 1 combat was all-or-nothing, and the weaker unit had a reasonable chance of winning. If a rival caught you unprepared then you were totally screwed. Conversely if the AI pulled ahead you could still get lucky and win. There was an element of suspense to the game that was just magic.

Personally the big break was Civ 5 moving to 1 Unit Per Tile. This had huge secondary edfects that even Civ6 have barely quite managed to wrangle.

Unstacking both units and the cities has made a very different game now from the original Civilization Games.

If you're still on Civ5, might I recommend the Vox Populi mod? Really improves everything across the board.

Folks on Realms Beyond Forums have taken to balancing and improving on FFH if you were interested. Now renamed Erebus in the Balance

https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=24

I also prefer turn-based games, but I've never found one that isn't extremely boring to play in multiplayer mode. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Turn-based is best for single-player games. After all, with multiple people, you end up waiting for somebody to take their turns. If turns are sequential you end up a lot of time waiting. Real-time is generally a better fit for multiplayer.

Agreed. Turn-based, especially sprawling lots-of-choices like the 4X genre, don't work particularly well in MP. Instead you ideally need to move to simultaneous turns.

Or be like the forums hounds who play 1 turn a day and analyze EVERYTHING.

Personally I would move to Tabletop games (or Boardgames). They're much better designed for short turns with interactivity so there's minimal downtime for players getting bored.

That being said, if you're looking for Civ5 but on mobile with Multiplayer, UnCiv is a FOSS project for Android, PC, Linux, and Mac w/ Java. Moderately vibrant MP community on the Discord.