I think a big part of this is lack of interesting terrain. They should have taken a leap forward with terrain, instead they basically just copy pasta Civ 5.

I mean you basically have, Plains, Grassland, Desert, Tundra. That's it. The world is more than 4 biomes, they really could have been creative here and create more unique worlds, rather than have 2 types of trees for the entire world (Forest/Rainforest).

Desert could have had plants or cactus in it, different tree types, etc

I mean really, 99% of the time you settle in either plains or grassland. They coulda added a few more to mix things up, rework the tile yield system to allow for more variance by increasing base numbers.