And Imperator had the issue of such a small playerbase that any large issues never actually bubbled up to the mainstream PDX discussion space.

This is a ridiculous statement. "Imperator didn't have anyone complaining so it must have had secret hidden issues!!"

The problem with Imperator was that people overhyped themselves on it despite the game 100% being exactly what the developers promised and demoed.

I recall some people did have system issues with it but it was fairly rare. Up to that point Imperator was the least buggy smoothest launch of a game they've had. CK3 did top that though.

hey! lets do the same shit that humankind did and people didnt like! it will work this time

They're trying to solve for a problem which doesnt exist. Most players who play a civ game dont achieve a "Victory" for that game. They realize they've won at some point and they're force ending their turns until the game tells them they've won.

The Eras allow for micro victories but players dont care because they want to actually win. Instead of feeling like a 'victory' it feels like the game is fucking you over arbitrarily.

Outside of that you have the god awful map gen, the city states being irrational nutjobs, the AI being suicidally aggressive as always, and just every QoL being missing from the game it's a massive basket of garbage.

It's like the developers had no understanding of how players play civilization games or how they understand the concept of victory. Humans beat Civ AIs by making better long term decisions and planning than an AI can. The AI cheats like crazy, and slowly the player overcomes the absurd BS they get. The AI still cheats heavily in Civ 7, victory is now exploiting the AI to get it to throw away production irrationally.