Civ V is an interesting case, since there's another thread in here somewhere about companies charging to fix design mistakes, and Civilization was really one of the OGs when it comes to that.
I wouldn't say Vanilla Civ V was bad, but it wasn't great. I probably wouldn't recommend it without the two expansions. I guess it's a moot point these days though since it's all sold together.
A mod from the early days of Civ V was Communitas [0], it became the Community Balance Patch and is nowadays called Vox Populi [1]. It vastly improves AI, balance and adds a ton of features. There is still regular development, with stable versions being released every 1-2 months.
Without this mod I’d have long stopped playing Civ V, and the lack of such a fix/balance mod (Civ V had an official source release and SDK which is what made the mod possible) is why I can’t get into Civ VI
Yeah I've been playing the same mod for years now too. It's basically the 3rd expansion as far as I'm concerned haha.
I just remember picking up Civ V when it came out and going back to Civ IV because it got boring after a while. I loved the main changes (more vibrant and realistic graphics style, one unit per tile combat), but the systems didn't seem that fleshed out yet and the games were a bit repetitive. I don't think the game really hit it's stride until the first expansion, so it felt a bit like having to buy the game twice just to get a good product.
I wouldn't say Vanilla Civ V was bad, but it wasn't great. I probably wouldn't recommend it without the two expansions. I guess it's a moot point these days though since it's all sold together.