What version of Age of Empires did I play?

I recently bought the AoE bundle in the Steam Sale and have been enjoying playing AoE II. When I was younger ~15 years ago I remember playing an Age of Empires game but it was a bit different in a few different ways.

• It was Asian factions. When you'd start a game you'd have one high level Asian champion.

• The stable only produced horses, from that you would place infantry or archers onto them to create cavalry.

• You would have to send villagers to the barracks to become infantry.

• There was a multi-layered map system. Your starting base would be it's own map with a wall to the South. Here's a terrible paint version of it: https://i.imgur.com/CcUDMrP.png. The big building was like a temple, the smaller one would be your Town Hall where you produced villagers. Your forest was at the top. A wall further down with a path leading up to the gate.

• If you went down the to the Southern edge of your home map your troops would move into the 'World' map which looked like this: https://i.imgur.com/AsAgs49.png. Each coloured building would lead to that player's home map. The rest of this world map could be a lot of treasures to find.

• There were ladder units used to scale the enemy's walls rather than breaking down the gate.

None of my googling is answering any questions for me and I'm deeply confused. My memory could be hazy as it was so long ago and maybe it wasn't even an AoE game. However so much of it wored exactly the same, The UI is all in the same place, the troops move and act the same, the buildings look the same, and I swear it was called Age of Empires.

Any help would be much appreciated, if I can remember anything more I'll add it to the post.