The golden rule of sequels is to improve on the original. DoW2 does something strange and strips out stuff that the original had which is simply detremental to the game (for example stances).
Demigod at least feels finished if a little threadbare. While DoW2 just felt like it was a CoH mod.
They're on the same engine so that's not terribly surprising, games from the same company in the same genre are always going to have a similar feel, see Valve, Blizzard and ID for other examples.
Having everything from DoW1 (base building etc.) wouldn't have changed it from feeling like a CoH mod I don't think, if anything it would feel more like a mod since less changes would have been made.
As long as Halo Wars doesn't win, I'm happy, but I didn't think DoW2 was really good at all... But then, I never played 1.4
Yes Halo Wars needs to be forgotten quickly, it's disappointing Ensemble came out with something so poor as their final project.
Look, it's already nominated in the strategy section, so you don't have debate whether it's enough of an RTS now. You just need to judge whether it's better than the other nominees.
Which in my case I'm afraid it's not, I prefer DoW2 to Demigod. Poor balance (Which 1.4 mixes up at least, even if it doesn't really fix) with interesting mechanics and fun gameplay appeals to me more than OK balance with shallow mechanics, clunky controls and stripped down basic RTS gameplay.
I don't feel I've been anywhere near enough of a jerk to warrent sympathy voting DG over DoW2.
Yeah 1.4.2 (soon to be 1.5 and we can actually play again...) isn't a silver bullet but the balancing challenge in DoW2 is far more complicated than the one in DG imo.
Anything but Halo Wars.