I liked Dawn of War 2 significantly more myself. I really liked the hero/rpg system as well, there were some neat ideas, mechanics and concepts with the whole execution of that.
The thing about Dawn of War 1 was, it was a neat game and all of that, but the problem is that it reminded me too much of Company of Heroes 1. I'm not sure which game came first, but the mechanics were extremely similar. DoW was basically Company of Heroes in the future and with melee combat. And Company of Heroes was the better game both in terms of production value, graphics, design, and reception, as well as the amount of time they spent post-production working on it (3 expansions as well as a decade of balance work. They even attempted to make Company of Heroes Online using the engine but it turned out to be a flop).
So DoW 2 separated itself enough from the original game to merit its own feel and quality as an RTS. Yes, it was a little too micro based, but let's be honest, everything Relic makes is micro based, that's just kind of how the games are designed.
I do like base building, but only if it's interesting and actually adds to the game in a meaningful way. I found base building for the most part in CoH 1 and 2, and DoW 1 to be somewhat futile. Most the time you only built structures to unlock new units, and since the games were won or lost based on capture points anyway, there was no point. Why not just spend the resources to unlock the ability to produce the units instead? Would have had the same effect. Buildings were more or less placeholders existing for the sake of notoriety in those games. Occasionally you could build a bunker on the frontline and that's kind of cool I guess. Britain from CoH 1 and OKW from CoH 2 have frontline bases that they can build but you can build similar structures in DoW 2, there's no reason to have "base building" if that's all it's for.
For me an example of meaningful base building would be Grey Goo or Forged Alliance. In Grey Goo it was interesting how the Humans had to connect all their structures to the main headquarters with energy rails but the Beta could build anywhere on the map. The Goo didn't even have a base, all their "buildings" were mobile. That kind of diversity and creativity when it comes to base building can go a long way in making it a mechanic that doesn't just exist for the sake of existing.
Forged Alliance did base building in a similar fashion to Total Annihilation (expected, given that it was the 'spiritual successor'). You carefully managed resource production through the types of buildings you created, their configuration, and even the technology tier. Unit production buildings could be assisted or created en masse in order to increase the production rate of your war machine.
In addition to that you had things like artillery emplacements that could hit huge swathes of the map, turrets, shield generators, nukes, anti-nukes, and a ton of other really neat ideas that made buildings a crucial part of the game.
So to me, those are examples of what meaningful base building looks like. Creating a new building just so you can finally produce this shiny unit or that shiny unit is laziness.
