It feels like Rome but a bit more longwinded.
Rome was actually fairly broken when it came out. They had a ridiculous time limit on battles (which I suspect came from Sega looking to make the battles more 'fast moving'), your troops would run away at the drop of the hat and it was easy to game the AI. In many ways, it was the fan made mods and TC's that really made it shine - but the campaign strategy was never really that deep.
Med2 was better, but for some reason it didn't feel very 'gritty' or as historically true as Rome. Not sure why - maybe the units were all too clean and shiny. But again some of the AI was pretty broken and the best play (for me) came from the Stainless Steel mod - another fan made mod.
Suspect much the same might happen with this latest offering. So to that end, I've ordered X3 Terran Conflict (because I hear the interface is better than X3 Reunion) and then it'll be a rerun of Gothic3 cause there's a new (big) community patch on the way