The 3d art just looks like a console game aesthetic - it's extremely kitschy - I guess I'm just not in the target demographic.
Maybe there could be a "Civ for adults". With just way less content, shorter games and a more mature art style.
Civ 1 didn't have: culture, religion, great persons, great works, armies, ranged units, luxuries, strategic resources, building placement, unit xp/promotion. Civ 1 didn't even have an improvement for forest tiles.
Civ 1 did have as extra: home city for units. Marine units had to be transported by ship - but that added an interesting mechanic, you had to protect your super important transport loaded with 7 very expensive units. Terrain improvements took a really long time so you had to have multiple settlers work on the same tile. Some superfluous things like fortresses. Small city spam ruined Civ 1.
However, if you want, you can play very war like, or avoid war quite well. Snowballing early with a push is a viable strategy.
Rushing tech to get the first cannon and pushing then as well.
It depends on what civilization and what special units and buildings you have.
Which one? There are at least two different ones, with the same name, based on the computer game franchise. (And, of course, the Avalon Hill game predating the computer game, but that doesn’t seem relevant.)
The Civilization board game was similarly boring. Most of the time there were no wars, and everybody was just trading and dealing with disasters and barbarians.