Ok, I see some people throwing around wierd rumors they heard about the game. I'll attempt to clarify, since I've actually played it.
1. No, there's no base building worth mentioning. But no, you won't miss it much. You main base is essentially all the stuff you built in DoW1 rolled into one single structure. In all fairness, base building was just something to occupy you while you wait for stuff to happen, a filler mechanic. Build orders are still important, only it's unit build orders you're concerned with now, not urban planning. Also, this means that all your units come from the same building and you don't need to poke around your base to get all your production queued...
2. Unit upgrades aren't global, you buy them for every unit individually. Again, this works great. The only problem is learning all your commander upgrades, since each gets about 10 of them, can have 3 of them active and can switch them around. Kinda like the Necron Lord from DoW1.
3. There is no lack of stuff to do in the game. At best, you can buy yourself a few seconds of peace every now and then, but every time the shooting stops, there is likely something else you should be doing, like queuing more units, repositioning your forces, upgrading your power generators, decapping and capping points, harrassing or just going to find more stuff to kill.
4. Unit placement and micro wins the battle. Attack + move loses battles. DoW1 was a macro oriented game. DoW2 is the opposite. If you can outmaneuver your opponent, you can take out a force several times your size. I managed to turn a nearly complete defeats into victories by careful unit placement and proper use of special abilities.
DoW2 is an RTS game. It's not the first game to take the focus off base building, and if you define an RTS by base building, I am forced to disagree with your definition of the genre. Especially since such a definition means that Homeworld series, World in Conflict, Myth series, Kohan series and Ground Control series are not RTS games. Are you saying that those games are not RTS games?
Geez, some people and their security blankets...
P.S. When I say "take the focus off base building" I mean exactly that. Some of the games I mentioned do away with bases altogether, others just streamline the entire thing (DoW2 is in this category).