I've done it. I save the game right before I'm about to uncover a barbarian hut, then move onto it. If I don't like what the random number generator gives me, I load the saved game and do it again. Over and over again.

See? I've played ONE turn of Civilization, just repeated about 50 times.

I see. So what's worse than not being to play only one turn of Civilization is being able to play only one turn of Civilization.

Early game, no. Late game, it can take 5 or 10 minutes per turn and you may be capturing more than one city per turn during an invasion, I can see it working.