I kind of feel the same way. I love CIV 5 and have hundreds of hours playing it, and still play on a regular basis. But I too find myself playing tug and pull in trying to decide which one to play first, LH or CIV 5. They are both great games and fun to play. If I don't get and hour in of each of them first thing in the morning with a good cup of coffee, my day is already off to a bad start. I wish I could "ctrl n" that

That would be the same as turning off barbarians and lions and such. Civ does have those elements in the game and thus one cannot turn off monsters. I would agree that turning off quests and goodie-huts then compare, but not the monsters as they exist in both games.

They are separate games and I wasn't comparing Civ to FE, I was comparing the turn based 4x games I've played to FE:LH

I've played

GalCiv 1

GalCiv 2

Civ 3

Civ 4

Civ 5

Warlock

Lords of Magic (I think that was a 4x game... was a long time ago though)

Endless Space

Legends of Pegasus --- not recommended

Each of these games are fun and they are really hard to compare to each other

I like what FE brought to the table. As they have succeeded in enhancing certain mechanics, and if you play without ALL GOODIE huts and leave only resource locations (mind you I like to experiment with mods), I still like FE over the other ones, simply because of the multi-city tiles that one can create and watch your cities mold to the world.

really I can take or leave the level up scene, doesn't produce anything for me and the auto-resolve feature... although the tactical battle add to the game, it is not the driving point to the game. I also suggested a long time ago in a thread on FE that people will not feel this is a 4x game for this same reason, but I was assured that it was a 4x game, which it is at it's core.

To oversimplify, LH is Civ with magical explorer units and monsters for barbarians.  The whole eXploration phase is eXpanded, in content and in length.  I always like the exploration phase of Civ, so this is even better.