My original understanding of The Last Alliance was that it was going to be principally a nation-building RTS with an Age of Empires-like gameplay, set in Arda in its various ages. Right now, I know that the development team is working on a set of campaigns that will focus on the movement of units within one of the civilizations (the Noldor) against another one (the forces of Morgoth).

There is not a lot of info on the website for any but the four showcase civilizations. What I am going to do is go through and ask which of these details and units are going to be kept and which will not.

The unit list for the Noldor is:
Citizen
Scout
Banner-bearer
Songweaver
Herald
Guard
Sentinel
Soldier
Archer
Rider
Mounted Archer
Lord


I know that NaurwenT has recently painted a very beautiful picture of the Noldorin Captain, (and every race has a lord/captain-type unit, I note). How many of the others will be retained?

(More civ questions to follow)

@Beren - the above unit list is more or less still intact - although you might scratch off the Songweaver as it is now - also the Guard/Sentinel/Soldier unit will be combined into one basic soldier-unit.

the thing is - civilsations like the Noldor will come in different flavours - determined which (Sub)Faction you are playing. For example if you choose the House of Fëanor you'll be treated with a slight different unit-list than e.g. House of Fingolfin. This 'modular' setup allows us to include many more specialised civilsation sets such as the Gondolindrim as well as the folks from Nargothrond.

So, for instance, the Houses of the Noldor would each have the basic stock of Noldorin units, but each house might have a few additional units unique to itself, or at least non-uniformly distributed among the various Houses?

If guards are being removed, is the concept of Home Area also being removed? Do Citizens have a militarization feature?

exactly - e.g. the House of Fingolfin will have access to Mounted Archers


correct - the Home Area concept was ditched. concerning the militarization of civilian units no decision has been made yet - although i dare to predict this gameplay concept won't find it's way into Nern Ennorath.

Is the economic model even under discussion at present, or is it being kept as it was?

currently we are focusing on NE. it is still undecided what will become of the old concepts (including economy, research ...).
we will consider this once we've progressed a bit more with our current plans and find some time to do some planning ahead. but currently this is not an issue for us.