I have joined the club with a game of brown wrapper 1.01. I never played the original game.
For some reason it reminds me of a game called Imperialism 2 from years back.
I will play more and perhaps try one of the community mods. The parts of the game that are good are very good but its so clear that much more could have been done.
The AI is alarmingly bad, though I will not win this first game after being waylaid by a Cherokee uprising I did not see coming. I was watching my European competitors who, it seems, can be mastered by a single privateer.
I do hope the higher difficulty levels prove much more difficult.