>>4409>I don't remember cities being independant all that wellCities couldn't hold off on their own or anything against a real force, but it certainly makes it easy to ignore military altogether (with the unaggressive bots). Realistically, you could leave your cities undefended entirely in 5, so long as you don't get into a war with a neighbor. Worst case scenario you get attacked by a barbarian or some other miniscule force, but you could hold off a few turns for a unit to be built. Realistically, if any force entered a city without any sort of organized military, the city would surrender to avoid unnecessary casualties. It punishes aggressive players by slowing down their forces in a stupid way. It would encourage the stacks of death more, if they allowed it, instead you have to hold off until later when you get units that can move after combat and slowly move a huge mass of units that can efficiently conquer.
>archers and artillery units don't have actual ranged attacksYeah, that's pretty stupid. It makes it pretty much impossible to have archers act to support the melee units by thinning the enemy a bit, as they actually would. I do really like the proper ranged combat functions of Civ 5.
>I'm not sure how they could have fixed thingsIt's hard to balance it in a way that pleases everyone. You have people that only care about combat and people that hardly use the combat features. Personally I'm closer to the former, even if I prefer culture victories and the like. It keeps things from becoming stagnant, as opposed to taking the most efficient path through the tech tree.
All in all, they're fun games, and I like both 3 and 5. I realize it'd be impossible for them to make a game that does things perfectly because there's people that enjoy other aspects more. I like 3 more because it feels a lot less restricted that 5.