Civilization V

I've played various versions of the Civilization PC game franchise for many years. Lately I picked up Civ V, and I have some complaining to do.

The Civs over the years have had their problems, and most of those problems have to do with wholly controllable gameplay. Civ V is no exception. For now, I'll compare V to IV.

My biggest complaint, common to all versions of the game, is how ancient tech combat units can do damage to modern armor/air units. I don't care how many arrows you fire at a tank, the tank won't notice one little bit. And I'd like for someone to tell me how a trireme can do damage to a battleship. Technology advances for a reason, because it's better. I'd like to know the thinking behind this concept.

Now a list of issues:

1) In Civ IV, aircraft could not kill other units, except air units. They could do damage, but not kill. I Civ V aircraft can kill ground and sea units.

2) In Civ IV, aircraft could perform recon sweeps, to view areas outside of the visible range of your cities and other units. Perfectly normal thing for aircraft to do. In Civ V they've completely done away with recon missions for aircraft. WHY???

3) In Civ V an aircraft cannot destroy tile improvements, they could in Civ IV.

4) In Civ V an aircraft cannot attack a city tile unless it is in visual range of a city or a firendly unit, even though you KNOW the city is there. WHY???

5) In Civ V you can gift units to City-states, but not air units. WHY???

6) In Civ V, and Civ IV, I believe, airchaic missile-weapon units (archers, crossbowmen) have ranged attacks, but not gunpowder units (musketmen, riflemen, infantry, mechanized infantry, tanks). WHY???

7) In Civ IV, tanks could bombard cities in order to destroy defenses without incurring damage. In Civ V they can't.

In all versions of the game, as far as I remember, naval units have the same bombardment range, regardless of the level of technology. The exception in Civ V is for modern naval units, you can get enough promotions to get an increased range. I'm not sure how a promotion would suddenly increase the range of your guns, but there you go.

9) In Civ IV you could stack and group many ground units together. In Civ V you can't stack any ground combat units at all. But, you can stack air units in cities, even though there are ZERO air-related city improvements in the game. No airport, airbase, nothing.

10) The AI civilizations can throw insults at you, and complain about your troops too close to their borders, but you can't do the same to them. You either have to take their insults, or go to war.

11) Civilizations who don't have gunpowder can somehow do damage to air units. If I attack a Knight with a helicopter gunship, the knight can potentially kill the gunship. I'd like to know the logic that went into that one.

12) Many of the technologies and Wonders in Civ V are pretty useless. For example: Researching Physics lets you build the Trebuchet... That's it. No other advantage apart from being a stepping stone to other techs. The Refrigeration tech lets you build the Submarine and the offshore oil platform. Nothing about food or anything. For the hospital city improvement, 50% of food is carried over when the population increases by one. What the hell does a hospital have to do with food?? Those are just a few of many examples of useless crap.

Civ V has been less enjoyable for me than IV, in spite of any improvements.