I think AAA scale in general leads to some of the "suckage" issues since the problems occur in all large productions. With the capital comes risk aversion and to recoup the costs they go more lowest common denominator in addition to coordination issues with large teams and scaling. Even less overtime intense efforts like live action movies show these flaws.

Now they certainly do have unique pathologies related to their "cheap" talent pool churn - the lack of experienced people leads to some shockingly bad mistakes reoccurring, and lack of attention to detail from passion often shows.

Later Civilizations (V and later) for instance often came out with some shoddy AI doing things like pathing algorithms clearly designed before they added the one military unitn one civilian unit per hex limit, spamming absurdly bad trade deals, or deciding the proper thing to do against a technologically advanced power who thanks to game mechanics gives research points for every technology they lack is embargo them over conquest of one militant city-state, making it even harder to catch up.