I preferred it because I considered the point of Civ to be building up your economy/tech such that you were superior to your opponents, and then using that econ

I preferred it because I considered the point of Civ to be building up your economy/tech such that you were superior to your opponents, and then using that economic/technological advantage to out-produce them in military and defeat them that way. The shift from death-stacks to one-unit-per-tile made economic advantage relatively less important and battlefield tactics relatively more important. Tech is still important, though. Some players like the old feel where battlefield tactics were abstracted away, and some players like the new feel where battlefield tactics are a big part of the game. But they are two very different feels from the same franchise, so we get into this debate.