You are bringing up some valid points here, however I wouldn't see the balance problem on the imladris side. First of all I think this faction is overall pretty good balanced and can be played with success against every other faction except Lothlorien and Ered Luin as you already pointed out.
(However its much more difficult to play as you are not allowed to loose any unit or get caugh offguard at any time. Therefore you have one of the most powerful scouting skills of the game via gidor)
I think the edain team is already fully aware of Loriens OPness and will look over it, but here some outtakes:
- Haldirs arrow is realoading with horrendous speed,
- Legolas knives wrecks with his abnormously high aoe every melee army (not that significant vs. Imla) and in archer mode he can bring down any heroe.
- Galadhrim have crazy damage and are pretty cheap for their effectiveness as you pointed out, and cannot be countered at all (archers --> Galadhrim are especially effective against them; cavalry
--> Galadhrim take 2+ times to run over due to their crazy hitpoints --> every other unit gets taken out from range or slaughtered in melee combat.
Combined with the most powerful Anti-cav pikes in the game, the fastest pikes in the game, the knockback resistance from the singers, crazy amounts of stuns and the elkriders lothlorien is practically immune to cavalry since the midgame. And there we have it. An archer faction which with silverthorn wrecks everything, immune to cav.
Additionally, the Lothlorien base is basically invulnerable. You can bunker with your archers in your base and since Caras galadhon guards outrange catapults sit there without danger of beeing attacked. In my opinion thats even the most significant point and should be looked upon first by the team.
So much to the faction of lothorien. You see, its the faction itself which is broken against any other faction if played correctly. I agree that vs. Imladris its especially strong because of Imladris archer-weakness, but this remains the problem of imladris. On how to maybe think to counter that I agree with what Elendil said above.
In your next point you mention dwarven axethrowers. They are pretty overpowered too at the moment, mainly becaues they profit from the blades upgrade like the rest of your army too, and because their damage counts as melee damage.
This strategy however is countered simply by Imladris cavalry and Imladris agression. Against an erebor player you need to constantly keep his army (especially his axthrowers) small so that when he finally reaches forged blades he doesn't have enough units to upgrade with it. If he does indeed manage to either win ealry engagements or get a big axthrower clump its pretty difficult for an imladris, but thats the job that needs to be done: keep him small.
Ered Luin is too strong in gereral, but against imla its a freewin.
The other matchups are more balanced and pretty interesting to play as imladris and quite winnable.
I am not so sure about your archer-proposal. If archers would be already in level one barracks I feel imla would turn into this ugly archer faction immune to cavalry, although its rather supposed to be the strong melee elite faction. I think its well balanced via the dunedain archers to which you have access through the outpost and the extremely strong lindon archers in the tower; tactical diversity is available. (The only faction against which this change would be needed is lorien anyways, so lets see how it goes after they are nerfed.) In some other matchups I feel this change could break alot.