Interesting points. I for one have secretly hoped for a CM game or Mods for the Arab-Israeli conflicts of '48, '67 and '73. Now that would be interesting.
I think the answer to all of those will end up being yes. CMSF is the first in it's series, unlike say CMAK which was the result of a number of developments over a number of years. BFC have already talked about additional forces for the Shock Force environment, and about applying the same mechanisms to other eras in time. I see it as, 'So far, so good,' and patience will reap it's own rewards as new things are added to the CMx2 platform.
I'll go for "mostly". Because of the expressed developer philosophy it is never going to be the same as CMx1. But getting some reasonable flexibility in units, and geting ifendsih scenarios that leave us puzzling over every move (with the pathfinding sorted out)....I can see that. Not now, but maybe six months or a year from now.