Profile of Rosbone

Novgorod imo suffers from blob in your retreat path syndrome where the retreat paths are very accessible to blobs so you can get your ass kicked easily if you’re not careful. The middle is also pretty uninspiring. Whoever controls the church controls middle.

I blame AE, he said it needed something like a church in the middle

But I also felt the church helped slow the blobs from moving left to right in the middle. Since the two main cutoffs are in the middle of the map, a player could just move his blob to center, control the whole map, and wipe retreating squads. The damaged church is weak and has no windows facing North/South so it is very easy to attack.

But in order to get the far munition point you need to take the central cutoff, which can make you vulnerable to retreat wipes. Since the retreat path may be right thru the middle of the map.

Valid point made. Thanks for the comments. If changes are made we can look into moving some sight blockers to force better retreats or possibly change the cutoff structure.

Don’t forget maps get vetoed purely because of atmosphere settings as well. Which as far as I’ve been told/seen is why maps like ladoga are at the bottom. Remember when noggano had to drop from SMC cause there were so many snow/rain maps and he played on a toaster?

Yes, the two lowest played maps are Winter maps. Both maps seem to have a pretty standard layout. Novgorod ended up being similar to KFS in layout when final changes were made. Which is the 4th most popular map and has nearly similar plays as the most popular map.

Crossroads Winter, however, has nearly the same winter settings as Novgorod, but seems to be getting good plays? A little too early to tell.

SiphonXs stats say Crossroads Winter has only been in rotation about 1/2 the time so it would be approximately 2600 plays which puts it around the seventh most played map just above Nexus. Although the community across the board was excited for its addition to automatch.

The first batch of stats that came out had Bayeux being played very frequently. But now they say it is not being played? That seems a little suspicious. Hopefully there was not some weird server glitch. I watch the spectate board all day long and I see that Bayeux is still being played. But since all of the 1v1 maps are being played fairly even, eye-balling the boards is not a good indicator of being played or not.

With that said, I see Novgorod get most plays from about level 14 and down. I have not seen any streamers really complain about it. And many twitch chats sound like they are unsure if they like it or not. Which would say its fundamentally okay, but the Winter aspect could be killing it.

After some time in automatch, I think we could bring the bases in a little to make it smaller and review the cutoffs. As Luvnest has stated about bigger maps, they become less about fighting and more about capping. Which is just annoying as hell. But we have not received any real reasons to make any changes yet.

Now is the time to speak up!!! I cant emphasize this enough!!!

What do you guys not like about these two maps?

Early map veto stats show:

 15 Crossroads                      :  2272
 14 Langreskaya                     :  2197
 13 Faymonville Approach            :  2186
 12 Kholodny Ferma (Summer)         :  2124
 11 Crossing in the Woods           :  2033
 10 Bayeux                          :  1950
  9 Vilshanka                       :  1938
  8 Lost Glider                     :  1905
  7 2p_novgorodoutskirts            :  1890
  6 Rechnaya Pereprava              :  1819
  5 Nexus                           :  1794
  4 Angoville                       :  1748
  3 Arnhem Checkpoint               :  1712
  2 Ladoga Karelia                  :  1387

less chance of an idiot in your team or a dropper

Maybe. Most idiots and droppers play 4v4. So those idiots would just move to 3v3. Now that idiot would reduce your overall team strength from 75% to 66%. Statistically, the more people, the stronger your overall team strength should be. Bad players and team balance should be more even with more players?

Besides all that, I would rather play 8v8 than 4v4 The more carnage and chaos the better! The best part of COH (and hopefully AOE4) is controlling large armies and actually feeling like you are managing and seeing what each unit is doing. So giant late game pushes are the payoff for some of us. Cute little flanks and cheese abilities do nothing for me. I want to see walls of death crashing into each other to then be wiped off the face of the earth with some nuke like bombs!

1v1-3v3 = sparkler.
4v4 = M80.

Yes, I have a very low IQ

There is something called Vickers and often on 4v4s there is someone to hold the flank of your Vickers'.

Exactly. That is why I said OKW in 4v4 mode. Maps like Red Ball where two MGs lock down a whole side. If the enemy is remotely competent, OKW will get pushed off the map.

The 3v3 mode and larger 4v4 maps like Steppes provide more flanking and less MGs. So OKW can do fine in these situations.

OKW is meant to be strong early. Losing that first engagement and retreating puts them behind for a long while. Because they cant get back to the front until they tech.

Go Medic truck and hope your ISGs out perform the enemy mortars. Or use ISG smoke to push MGs. Takes a long time but gives the advantage of having that close retreat point later which is key to OKW pressure.

Go Medic truck and Halftrack. Then you need a rak to support it. Still get that late game medic truck pressure. A little fragile and you lose an early game inf squad to the rak.

Go Mechanized and make either Luchs or Stuka. Stuka pays off all game long with little micro. Luchs has shock value but requires micro and is easily countered. You lose the medic truck late game inf pressure.

By the time you get your panthers and tigers, the whole area is covered by MGs, AT guns, and mines.

If I am way off base on any of these ideas, please explain. That is why we are here. To discuss and learn. Let us delve deeper into the MG Inception Principle