It's not as stripped of stuff as previous Civ titles were. Religions still exist for instance, and the way the game plays is a bit different as well.
The Diplomacy system is just dumb late game. It's almost impossible to keep allies, and the AI doesn't seem to realize that just because a city is (relatively) undefended, doesn't mean that it's owner doesn't still have the largest military in the game (this literally just happened to me). And these guys were the friendliest civ (that is, they were neutral on me) in the game relation wise. Stupid.
The maps got smaller too, even though cities require even more space. Not sure what the idea was there... for every civ to become a sprawling megalopolis maybe?
