It's a bit of an unsolvable tension. Too little to do per city and the early game where you have few cities is boring, too much per city and the lategame is overwhelming. Add a way to delegate tasks to AI, and the question arises of why those tasks are in the game at all if you lose nothing by automating them. And if you discourage wide play (which is my main complaint of the prior game, Civ 5) then you're barely interacting with the broader world at all, and the rest of the map seems pointless.