Bah. Out of box is a fine game. There are a couple strategies that are more effective, but finding those is part of the fun of the game to me. If you stay off the internet and just play within your play group, you’ll probably play at least a few dozen games before it starts to get too “dialed in”. For me and my group, that’s like a couple years, maybe. It’s only if you get on the internet and research the fruits of the the labor of armchair generals worldwide that it gets really out of whack. With a game this size and complexity, I think it’s just about impossible to achieve the requisite level of fine-tuning without public examination. Just too many man hours, and, because people tend to think along similar lines, there isn’t as much divergence. Dunno, just my thoughts.
tl; dr Good game. You’ll be glad you bought it.