Profile of Rosbone

Path leading to the castle should be along the walls of it and rocks, not this straight road. Adding more flanking routs should be consealed, so they dont look out of place. If you change something try to atleast make it natural in enviorment.

Reasons:
1) Originally making this opening would allow vehicles to path thru the castle.
2) It mirrors the entrance to the north for symmetry.
3) The castle already paths close the sides for flanking.
4) Having paths that lead to the sides more would allow the team on that side control of the path. They could wire it off easily. Having it in the middle would put it more in the contested area, so no side may have control of it during initial engagements.
5) To make it a true infantry flanking path, you may want sight blockers which would reduce the engagement area south of the new paths.
6) I doubt there were many functioning castles in WW2. So the one large opening theoretically leads into a park area where vacationers would gather before touring the castle.

The original thought was to have a more direct path to the fight for the south VP to make it less of a 1v1 situation. Making it as short as possible for shock value. And like I stated, it would be cool if all of a sudden a vehicle came rushing out of the castle Twisted Tootsy style

Sadly, we could have used your artistic opinion 2 months ago when the changes were due.

I have said it 1,000,000 times... RNG decides every game. Balance talk is a waste of time.

Just to clarify: have the purple areas been removed/fixed? Besides not being able to build, these areas cause vehicles to 'ice-skate' while on land. Very annoying. Lost a Jagdtiger there once because it couldn't back up because of the skating.

SHORT ANSWER
Yes the water areas(purple) have been optimized.

LONG ANSWER (My weak understanding of it)
COH has a water object that is placed on a map. This will 'fill' the areas with water up to a height that you declare. In most games drawing water can be a very costly operation as you need to draw the entire world upside down to create the reflection on the water. It is usually rendered to a low resolution texture in memory and then a shader program is used to draw the blurred reflection with a modulated ripple effect. There are of course many other operations such as fogging,etc to give it a realistic look.

It has always been a good practice to not have too many water objects on a map. So on a map like this where you need a lot of disconnected water sources you need to have multiple water objects which could kill your FPS in game (does it really anymore?).

Or you can use one water object and have the separate water areas connected by a very low terrain area. The COH engine will continue water under terrain if its height is very close to the water level. So you can make bumps and rocky areas on your beachs, river banks, etc.

Here it is used to connect all of these small lakes. Originally the low terrain connections were very large and created issues where the game engine says "If its purple it is not land. It is water". So you had vehicles acting weird and you cant build objects on that territory (MGs, wire, sandbags, etc).

The large purple 'water' areas have been stripped down to small lines where possible.

As far as AI goes, soviets are the strongest faction right now in the early game. A lot of the tools other factions need to be tough are very hard to program into the AI. When I test maps the Soviet bot always has the best score. Late game axis is very tough since the bot cheats and has so much extra fuel income.

That said, the AI has a hard time dealing with MGs. If they are satcheling you that fast/easy you may not be microing your MG enough. Most games you can set an MG in a building and forget about it because the AI does not know what to do. You can select your MG and then select the unit you want it to focus on to try and stop them beserker penals

If conscripts are snareing your vehicle easily you must not be "kiting" the cons. IE stay about two or more vehicle lengths away at all times. The cons can only snare you if they get closer than about 1.5 - 2 vehicle lenghts. Never drive right up to them.

The ZiS barrage is a one time thing. Just move the unit they are shooting at and you are safe until they can barrage again.

And as always never give your unit commands to go places because the AI uses this information to counter you. Always use attack move or tell your units to go much farther than you really want and remember to stop them.

I expected Talisman to be super strong in the 1st qualifier. Coming off the SMC games I expected him to be more tuned up than the competition.

But he brought it hard when it counted!

Congratz!