What do you think of having a separate ranked ladder for Age of empires 1 themed civs? This only applies to ranked games. In custom lobby you could both AOE 1 and AOE 2 civs in the same game.
I think the balancing would be immensely difficult if we have aoe1 vs aoe2 civs.
This would greatly fix balancing issues since the civs are so alien. Say for example they do not have the standard unit roster. Virtually all of the units are unique. Hoplites are basically like teutonic knights with bonus damage against cavalry in AOE 1. AOE 1 monks can convert units by killing themselves if they research a certain tech I believe to be called sacrifice.
Very strange naval units. And possibly a whole list of craziness.