The “people shouldn’t complain that Civ 6 is a builder when it’s always been a builder” is silly on multiple levels.
Who ever played Civ on an empty map with no AIs?
Factorio and Minecraft are builders, and even their AIs have more pushback than Civ 6’s.
Civ 6 fails at even being a builder. The whole system is built on the “ding!” immediate satisfaction of being awarded bonuses until you eventually realize that all those bonus systems are meaningless, badly designed, or overly fiddly. Factory bonuses, but you realize that requires you to exactly plan city placements thousands of years in advance. Bonuses for cultural artifact sets, but you realize the whole culture system is busted and all the artifacts/works don’t matter because tourism is all about seaside resorts. Bonuses for eurekas, but you realize it makes the whole thing feel overly gamey. The list goes on and on.
And finally, the designers revamped the entire series to make it more of a war game. I do not get how someone could look at the change they made to the 1UP system and say, “Yes this is obviously a builder. It was never meant to be a war strategy game.” They tried to turn it into Empire Deluxe. They sacrificed a LOT of what made Civ a builder or 4x game to achieve this. It failed. It failed as a builder. It failed as a 4x. It certainly failed as a war game.
Regarding it being a successful seller, I’m wondering how much of that is people liking the new direction the series moved in, and how much of that is simply expanded reach with modern online advertising and digital distribution. Not one single person I’ve talked to said it wasn’t a step down from previous Civ games. I can’t imagine new casual players getting into all the overly fiddly (and ultimately pointless) systems. I think it’s mostly the sheer momentum of the brand name, with people buying, but not enjoying, the game and expansions, hoping that it will get fixed and recapture old glory.