I'll wait and see how the trade routes go, but so far I'm leaning towards stopping them and just doing it all manually and keeping notes, like I do in my most involved complex games of cIV. Only those games involve 30+ cities, and here I'm dealing with 4 or 5 colonies. I don't like needless micromanagement for it's own sake, and there were specific steps taken with cIV to lessen it. Why is it increased in ColII?
Very little thought seems to have gone into the mechanisms of Col II, the reason being that everything (clearly including the attention of the developers when they produced the game) has been focused on getting to the War for Independence as swiftly as possible. I found even the original War for Independence a bit of a bore, and this one is about as exciting as fighting the Battle of Verdun. Just monotonous slaughter, and unless you have deliberately refrained from generating bells until late in the game, you are dead meat since the king adds fresh troops to his army practically every turn if you have good bell production. I have seen people claim the opposite, that they generated liberty bells from early on and yet won without any trouble, but I really don't understand how they can do it.
In the original game, the king's army was very big from the beginning, but he only added to it occasionally, and that happened whatever you did or didn't do. That meant that one got a fair amount of time to prepare for the WoI, and the time for that was due only after several other stages which were played for their own sake, not just for as a preparation for the endshow. Also, of course, one had until 1850 to become independent, not just to 1792. The earlier one rebelled, the smaller the king's army was, but it wasn't a mad rush against the clock as now. Also, the size of the king's army differed in proportion to the difficulty level.
Furthermore, In Civ II your European competitors are pathetically weak and don't stand a chance against their REF, and they don't have any money, so trading with them is pointless. The Indians have lots of money in the beginning but then run out of money completely. If that is a conscious game decision, it's a poor one.
And the way you discover treasures *everywhere* and can send them to your colonies unescorted without having to fear an ambush is silly. And something is wrong with the maps; even the "huge" one is barely as much land as in original Col; they just add more ocean. One has to choose "huge" and "low water level" to get a bit of moving space.
Despite the claims of certain players, this game needs a good deal more than some "polish". It would need a very drastic overhaul (which I don't believe will be forthcoming) to become enjoyable.