I'm going to post semi-random dev materials from Age of Empires 1 every day from today until the end of the KS campaign (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gabedurham/age-of-empires-how-ensemble-studios-made-history) for my book about the creation of the game. First up, the cover and a page from one of lead designer Rick Goodman's earliest design docs.

The vision for Age of Empires evolved considerably over time. Here you can see a hint of how much more geared they were early on towards Sid Meier's Civilization and other slower-paced strategy and simulation games. Initial plans were akin to a modern survival sim colony builder with Civ elements.

But by this point, already, they were shifting towards something faster. The first playable prototype felt too slow, and Rick was grappling with the challenge of how to find the fun — of how to streamline and whittle down their extensive ideation into a great game.

(I don't want to spoil the story, but the answer came from one of the programmers, Tim Deen.)