Well, it would be like AoC/AoK only if you weren't playing in team games. 60 pop worth of trade carts, anyone? There is no unit really like that in AoE3 and thats really good. The only thing that I miss is the enjoyment of sending 25 paladins into the middle of the trade route.
And with trade posts/factories (maybe whales? are you going to get rid of those as well?) giving you gold, it would only hurt the units that cost a lot of gold, cuirs, ww's, dopples, mercs, hussars...everything. Plus HC spam from facs would destroy any food/wood units. Some uniqute church techs would become huge, like French young/middle/old guard, 13 Spanish halbs/10 hackapells. Others, like 12 german dopps for 1200 gold would never be used.
Also, no games would make it into imperial. Theres no point in spending 4000 gold in order to get the ability to spend 1500 more to upgrade to imp units.
On the other side, Yukon will become the #1 map. That's the only sort of positive thing I see here.
[This message has been edited by Aoe3Wolverine (edited 03-25-2006 @ 11:23 AM).]