But the ships you took to battle were adjusted to be sloop/brig killers. So exactly as expected. SoL versus sloop is where it will get interesting.
Mind you, I don't expect the AI to know how to get the most out of theirs sloops in any case so for a practical purpose I don't expect to see all that much difference against a proper SoL.

But the principle of the thing still annoys me, regardless of how it ends up playing. To me it just seems so obvious that a greater fidelity to how things worked back then will automatically provide better balance.

Oh well... thank heavens for the modders, who can atleast in part undo the worst excess of this unimaginative C&C balancing.