Age Concept for Skirmish: Low Imperial

Just a silly idea for a skirmish mode, when you're picking the starting age.

In it, every player starts in the Imperial age. However, all their techs & upgrades are reduced to that of the starting Dark Age level. Loom is available, swordsmen line is initially militia, walls are unfortified, and so on, and so forth.

Another crazy idea to go further with it, is that players start with 0 resources, save for their villagers, and scout.

I feel this could lead to some interesting games, where you still have to hurry and build up your economy, but have more freedom to distribute your resources--in terms of unit upgrades. You could gradually and evenly upgrade all your units, to make sure they're cohesive...or you could potentially rush with an anachronistic combo of units.

Now, this would more than likely favor some civs over others, and I'm not expecting this to be balanced. But what do you think? Could it be fun?

Feedback appreciated!