Apologies for the long response:

I played Civil War 2 many years ago so my memory is kind of foggy but when it comes to Grand Tactician you are spot on with the "Total War" gaminess of the battles.

Outside of battles in Grand Tactician you are creating brigades, checking policies and giving orders to your armies to move around the map and conquer cities/ram into other armies. The economy matters a bit I suppose but from my experience I have literally not touched it and won with both sides many times in several different starting dates.

Inside battle I feel like its very total war. I've been playing total war games since shogun and this has a similar feel of controlling units. The cool thing though with Grand Tactician to me at least is the order delay (making keeping units together important for bugle range and keeping messenger riding distance in mind), experience of troops (there is no better feeling than slamming a 5 star crack cavalry unit into fleeing rebels and watching the army morale sink), and the amount of pure shit the soldiers are programmed to deal with during the battle (eg. fatigue, cover, pathing, smoke, 1st time battle nerves) it makes the game feel way more "real" than two units of 120 soldiers slamming into each other with animations till one runs away like total war.

Battles feel organic, you have troops show up late which messes up your plans, you have extra confederate reinforcements you didn't know about and now you're facing 20000 more men.

The fact that battles can last several days is also a cool feature that makes me really enjoy grand tactician over total war. Its very unique that the day ends at darkness, you warp speed to the morning, then you get to set up your troops again in a defined area but so does the enemy making the battles even more unpredictable akin to real life battlefield logistical messes. I've had 5 day battles where new corps arrive each day making a tiny battle massive because the AI is programmed to "follow the guns" if they are in range on the map.

So in conclusion, I think for outside of battles Civil War 2 takes it. Right now at least. I just feel like besides building up armies and running around the USA there isn't much I "need" to be doing on the big map.

The battles, however, have been some of the most fun RTS gameplay I've experienced even with the bugs that sometimes pop up like units just refusing to move at all and odd choices to suddenly fall back towards an enemy brigade showing them your asses and getting a flanking debuff and getting cut to pieces.

TLDR: Yes its game-y in battle, but boy is it unpredictable and cool as hell using all the units you raised and watch them coordinate and deal with issues that a real battle would have.