've been playing this game for hours today, so far I've had very few issues and I have to disagree with much that was said in the review. Overall the review lacked substance, and didn't really concern itself with the vast majority of the game.
The simple option to deal with slow turn loading times is to turn off that feature. The same problem existed in the first Rome TW, and the same solution - turn off the AI turns. If you want to view that information, there isn't really an easier way to view that info without watching every action turn by turn. That said, there aren't really many reasons to watch that info. A huge map? Yes. Shogun 2 was boring - the map was too small, the campaign boring. Shogun 2 is still a good game, but its small map size isn't interesting to me. It lacks the same possibilities that exist in the first Rome TW, Medieval and Empire.
If you were expecting building choices to be interesting, I think you were expecting the wrong game. The focus of the TW series has never been about the thrill of building up an individual city, but building your empire and the battlefield.
Bugs aside, I've had a lot of fun playing this game so far, and I'm intending to carry on playing it for a long time yet.