Could be. Although if you read the story we the devs back then actually proposed a game before age of mythology

It seems to me that this system was copied from Age of mythology.

wtf no, it so fast 11Min you can be 120-200 pop in tg  , if we boost the boom, we destroy more cav rush 

Oh interesting. I hadn't heard the reasoning before but it makes sense.

warcraft 3 and aoe 2 is 0,25 sec if i'm right, so it's ok

Interestingly, there is a difference between HP and armor bonus when it comes to healing: the armor doesn't reduce healing as it does taking damage. That would make an armor bonus stronger than a HP one. When Ptolemies had this cavalry hero that gave extra 40% HP to pikemen in his aura, you could heal the pikemen faster by moving them out of the aura. I remember playing some games from the times before the exponential armor system, and there seemed to be a problem where if a unit or building had more armor points than you had damage points, you wouldn't be able to cause damage to it anymore. And so there was a hard-coded minimum of 1 HP damage (one other detail is that nowadays the HP uses the fractional part, even if it's not shown). That could mean that you were better off using a greater number of very weak units (like archers) because you had the the guarantee of at least 1 HP per arrow shot.