I'm a huge Alpha Centauri fan, and have pretty much disliked Civ from Civ 4 onward.

AC and Civ up to 3: It felt to me like there were always multiple paths to victory, allowing me to do strange and crazy strategies that I enjoyed.

Civ 4: Felt as if they made it into a turn based RTS, it became too rigid and build-ordery.

Civ 5: I agree with you on the tiles, it felt very limiting and difficult to move units.

Beyond Earth: What a joke. I think I played it for 1-2 evenings before I gave up.

Civ 6: I'm not even going to bother.

In a sense, Civ 3 seemed more detail oriented in some aspects to me. For example how you could tell which "age" other players were in by the characters clothing, the art style seemed a little bit better suited for the game, the city zoom UI was in my opinion more clear, the diplomacy UI was more clear, etc. So yes, I am happy to see like-minded Civ players.

Now, I think with Civ 4 they tried to emphasize online play a bit... which to be fair, is not a bad motivation to have. The only problem is that emphasizing online play will impact offline play.