Civ 2 and Alpha Centauri were the last great games in the series. They kept making pointless additions after that which were both uninteresting and a hindrance to what made the past games fun.
I haven't tried Civ 5 yet; but 3 and 4 were not fun like 1, 2 (Especially Test of Time), and Alpha Centauri. I mean, they had a lot of interesting concepts; but they were just poorly implemented.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.