The only reason civ v is so addictive is that is is so easy to mod in factions, that everyone can play out their favorite fantasy. Lord of the Rings, The Witcher, Elder Scrolls, anything you want really. On the other hand, R2TW's mods come in the form of refining gameplay and such (except for the one LOTR) but these take a lot of work to balance in to the game. No one is going to replace Knossos with The Wheat Feuds and Rome with Eggmanland.
I actually think this is the far superior game in terms of gameplay and balance, but I play civ v more for the simple fact that I can use Eren Yeager to facestomp Cluny's Horde.
My first impression of Rome II (Emperor Edition) is that there are a lot of campaigns and factions to try. Even if I only play 10 turns of each faction on each campaign, that will probably be 100+ hours of play, so (at a reduced price of course) that's a big plus!
My first impression is similar to yours, Yudishtira.
Playing Empire Total War and Napoleon Total War made me realize how much I enjoy variety in battles, involving different types of units. NTW is a more polished game but ETW offers more varied opponents - in ETW, the Americas and the Caribbean offer different challenges compared to North Africa, India, the Middle East and Europe. In a similar way, I'm enjoying the different challenges of playing as Rome, the Iceni and Cimmeria in the first few turns of Rome II campaigns, with the different kinds of units and different opponents they face. The combination of the stronger garrisons, the greater ability of AI factions to rapidly recruit more units (compared to vanilla ETW) and the limited number of armies the player can recruit all make it harder to expand quickly in the early stages - at least for me as a new player - which I like.
Not a lot of praise, and a lot of bad things being said. *sigh* I had hoped this might be a good game.
I know there was much of an outroar about Rome II after the release. I didn't play it much back then and can't attest to it's original state. But I think the patched version of Rome II is a really well-functioning game, and with mods it comes close to being a flawless experience. Named and historied legions are fun, and the map is big and diverse. It does not seem to have any glaring bugs or major problems. The developers seemed to try to go a good job. They were very responsive to the community, and even fixed minor issues like adding legionary emblems in patches.