I've never played any of the Ultimate General games (yet), but that reminds me a bit of Age of Sail. The frigate and small ship combat is really fun. The later missions are heavily focused on ship of the line combat, and they can be a slog because ships of the line in Age of Sail are just boring. Probably the most unbalanced feature of the game is the upgrades, though. You can upgrade your ships to give them substantially more health, speed, melee (boarding) damage, etc, and equip your ships with all manner of different cannons, including carronades that will do significantly more damage in close quarters (where a lot of fighting occurs) than standard cannons. All of this is great, except that the AI never uses any of this, so your ships can have significant advantages even over ships of the same class. It's not game-breakingly OP, but it's noticeable. And it would be easy enough to fix: just let the AI upgrade their ships and change their cannon loadouts. It might make combat even more interesting and unpredictable, too. That's one reason why I wish the devs would develop the game further, instead of moving on to the next game. They've made a fun game, now, keep building on that. Oh well.
On topic, are there any other upcoming games where I could get my sailing ship combat fix? I've always had a thing for games with sailing ships. (Every now and then I get nostalgic for Tradewinds 2 and Tradewinds: Legends. Anyone ever played those?) I saw a trailer for
Republic of Pirates, a city builder RTS that looks... okay, I guess? Graphics look fricking outdated, but hey, who knows. Ubisoft has/had a (multiplayer, IIRC) fantasy pirate game that was announced so long ago, I can't even remember the name of it. I guess if it hasn't been released by now and I've missed it (which is possible), it's either dead or it's been in development hell for years. Is there anything else?