Some micromanagement before Civ IV was quite annoying. There was no overflow mechanics, so if you had a building that had 78 out of 80 production done, and you gain ten hammers, you lose eight of them. And to get around this, players micromanaged out of the wazoo. Same was true for income and beakers (science progress). Thankfully Freeciv added the Civ IV style overflow to at least production, which is why i tend to prefer Freeciv when I want to go for Civ II gameplay style. :)
Civ IV and V also keeps track of "cents" in the money system I believe, just isn't shown to the player.
And not to even mention, the "trade" system in Civ II. Which was removed cause of excessive (unfun) micromanagement. Moving those caravans all over the place wasn't fun. It's in Freeciv too annoyingly, but at least they removed the supply/demand system (which lead to even more micro).
Civ IV and Civ V have their micromanagment, but they feel honestly more productive in terms of tradeoffs. While in the older games, you would lose anything that overflowed or didn't round off right.
Civilization II is like Simcity 2000. Both games are heralded as being the best in the series by many people, but most fans I meet (that have tried out the newer games, and learned them) seems to prefer the fourth game in the series.