I'd like to start by saying that I have a tremendous amount of respect for the Edain team for all the work they have done in creating this mod and making it what it is today. With that said, I would like to discuss the new economy system that they are planning on implementing, and why I believe that it will have a significantly negative impact on the balance of the game.
The massive differentiation between internal and external resource buildings accompanied by the new citadel upgrade will diminish a significant element of strategy to the game and have a significantly negative impact on balance.
With the current system you have to plan out how you want to upgrade your economy buildings to allow yourself to get the maximum benefit between resource generation, command point limit, and forward mobility. When I say forward mobility I am referring to the defensive upgrades that help create a place for you from which to defend and press forward to attack the enemy. If you play smart like I do, then the strategy for upgrading your resource buildings will change depending on the faction you are playing, the map you’re playing on, and the current status of the match. This new system will force players to spend half of their internal structures on CP and the other half on resource generation.
This will have a significantly negative impact on factions like Angmar, because currently the best system for Angmar is to go full resource generation on internal plots and full CP on external since they don’t produce as much income. However, with the new system if they want to get to full CP then they will need to have several of their internal buildings and several external buildings dedicated to CP instead of being able to dedicate all external buildings to CP. I will provide some math to help explain this better. Currently you can get to full CP as Angmar with four external resource buildings going pantry one and then three of those four going pantry two. This means that you are receiving 1200 command points from those four external resource plots. On certain maps it can be difficult to get four external resource buildings, so even if you can only get three external resource buildings providing you with 360 CP per building, you can still receive an additional 1080 CP. In the new system, even with the citadel upgrade of 600, you will still need an additional 600 CP to get to the cap. This means you will need five external resource buildings going pantry, which is extremely unrealistic in most cases, thus forcing you to then spend your valuable internal plots on CP limit. On the other hand, this system will greatly benefit a faction like Lothlorien, because they will never have to expend resources on pantry for a standard resource building. The reason for this is because they will be able to get to full CP with just one Border Guardhouse and the citadel upgrade. This allows Lothlorien to then expend everything on full resource generation.
This new system also hurts other factions like Gondor and Imladris in a different way, because the research time to get to the next tier for your resource buildings is way too long. A five minute research time prevents Gondor from even getting Banner Carriers in the earlier stages of the game.
Lastly, it makes very little sense for the higher risk buildings to only provide half the benefit in comparison to the safe and secure buildings. Why should a building that requires a greater amount of attention to defend and is at a significantly greater risk of being destroyed not be as valuable as a building that is safe and secure behind a network of defenses. It also makes absolutely zero sense for the defensive upgrade to provide the archer tower only to internal resource buildings, especially when the external settlements are the ones that need it the most, since they are at a far greater risk to be attacked.
In conclusion I think that the current system has a few flaws, but overall is a great system that does not need to be completely overhauled. This new system diminishes elements of strategy and will have a significantly negative impact on the balance of game. However, if this is the route that the Edain team continues to follow, then I will strongly suggest that the benefits provided by both internal and external resource buildings be the same.