I've been revisiting anno 2205, infamously the ugly duckling of the Anno series of RTS games. I don't mind so much the fact that it's different, lacks customisation and random map generation - I'm bothered because the game is so slow to progress through on challenge settings, and it feels like a game designed just to artificially waste your time; in other anno games, you can always pull tricks to dig yourself out of economic crisis - selling off assets and surplus goods, completing quests for other parties, or taking loans. 2205 is very very confined in terms of what you can do to financially recover in the early game and forces you into a lot of military events.
I was just hoping for interesting tactics and a simple plot, which it delivered at first... but as the game develops it's as you said, mostly about learning to optimize your grind through exploiting systems that are basically only documented in wikis (what do all the stats and attributes do? Google it.)
Extremely reasonable assumption, and not your fault that Disgaea is secretly something it doesn't really advertise well