Sid Meier's Civilization V

For as much time as I've put into Civ 5 - coming up on my hour count with Skyrim, by now - and as much fun as I've had subjugating other cultures, it's hard to call the game a total success. There are too many UI bugs that mar the experience -- especially when the game's performance starts to suffer, and it becomes all too easy to click on what turns out to be the wrong button.

There are also some balance problems I take serious issue with. The combat outcome estimate can be distressingly wrong; I've even lost sometimes when it definitively said I would win. The AI players always behave irrationally unfairly, as they'll never accept any trade that benefits you more than themselves, but will turn right around and request free shit, then get pissy if you don't acquiesce. The "automatic" AI on units can be pretty retarded, leaving workers unused when they could be useful, or sending them off in random directions when they feel threatened (often directly into another unseen threat). And I really, really wish it was possible to destroy a city without sending a (usually weak) land unit in, or resorting to nuclear missiles.

Mods can address many of those foibles, but as I determined previously, Civ 5's mechanics are nuanced and elaborate enough that re-setting the balance on everything can be more trouble than it's worth. What would be perfect would be if the bevy of options in a mod like Vanilla Enhanced could be configured individually, or split into different mods, so I could "fix" the things that annoy me about Civ 5 without adding a whole bunch of other stuff. But, alas.

This isn't to discount how incredibly fun the game can be, despite the overwhelming time investment it requires. I've had a blast playing co-op games with a buddy (although multiplayer has some alarming performance issues), and playing a week-long game which I won on the first day (just to see how long it would take to colonize the entire map). At its core, Civ 5 is an approachable yet deep game about establishing a global empire, and who can't love that?

Better than: Brütal Legend
Not as good as: StarCraft II
I'm curious how Gods and Kings will change the formula: and hoping that it'll be dirt cheap come Winter.

Progress: Conquered planet, and so on