I personally like this change to the game.
Yes, I am at war right now (well sort of ... until the nation I was fighting got deleted for inactivity), with transitional government, and the whole barracks + guerrilla camp thing bringing my environment down to a sweet 5.18. I would like to note however that I am not bill locked and in fact my non-collection time income (around 3 mil per day) is still much higher than my bills (around 2 mil per day). I've only got -5 improvement slots which does make this a back step for me. Being ranked 574th in land probably helps me though. However, I can't say I care all that much about "MAH PIXELS" being lost. I am at war, after all.
However, the whole issue of cookie cutter nations is one that makes the game boring and disappointing to play. The complexity is lost when you can just read a guide that says build these improvements in this order and get these perfect trades. Anything that makes things not that simple is a positive change to the game. If anything, we should have more changes like this.
The only thing I would be concerned about is the fact that my native resources are environmentally unfriendly, which may discourage trading with me in the future, even if I'm not impacted myself. Perhaps the infrastructure purchase cost reduction should be increased somewhat with the industrial trade set to keep it comparable to the agricultural set, but otherwise I have no problems.
