Cossacks 2 was bad, I disliked it for the same reason you did.
The original Cossacks however, was quite a different game, it was the game that made me choose this nickname that I have kept ever since. It plays quite differently from Cossacks 2 as well. I bought it from GOG to play it on my Notebook and the basic gameplay ist still quite fun although it seems to have some bugs that weren't there back then (might well be due to age or that I should test compatibility modes). Another pretty good game with similar yet different gameplay was American Conquest, I wouldn't mind a remake of that either.

So yes, this is actually an announcement that excites me, at least in the long term as I'm not sure whether I can play it on release.