On oceania I'm down to laying in feilds and other objects. Since I'm introducing using rivers and bridges as combat focus points for GVs. I laid in a spawn point to test a river, three bridges, and a small airfield with the maproom next to the tower. At another location I discovered just how bad thick trees can be and will have to redo a land bridge more in favor of the defenders so GVs don't get stuck and scream at Hitech.
So yes you can find strategic fault with not having a town to delay and protect the maproom, while moving the GV fight away from the airfield. Just send two fighters with cannons, bombs and rockets over to de-ack, drop the VH, and run in, or air drop troops.....
We all know the players in AH3 only get that one together about as often as they run 4 boxes of lancs over a field, drop the town, fighter hangers and VH in one pass, with an M3 waiting to drop troops. Not very often anymore. And a task group could just swamp the field with fighter bombers and run in an LVT. And how often does that work perfectly every time? And only a percentage of fields will be setup this way, just like a few feilds with towns will get a river with bridges blocking the GV path off the spawn. The art of this is balancing new novelty with old comfortable things players expect, and have the skills wired to succeed at. And all of this maproom on the airfield with a river and three bridges will have two GV spawns. Means you may well get pushed onto a bridge and crushed from both sides. All the strategy arm chair generals should like that.
Knowing the propensities of AH GVers, a river with three bridges and getting across one bridge to sneak in behind defenders at another bridge will be attractive. It's a variation on spawn camping where the spawned in red guy has better odds and options to turn the tables. Defenders could be baited to the bridge just so a tanker can pad his kill score. The attackers stalled at a bridge head can call in a bomber to lay waste to the trees and tanks hiding in them to clear up the bottle neck.
So the screen shots below show the field I'm testing from inside of the terrain editor and flying over the river and trees. One eye opener I did not expect was the first time I pulled up to the river to try and find a bridge. The ground at the river edge was so open, traveling either direction looking for a bridge would get a tank killed by defenders on the other shore. And looking back from the shore to the nearest cover, no one would like driving with their back open to snipers to get into the trees to then go looking for a bridge. That time waster and suicide run would turn off AH GVers. So I added heavy tree cover on both sides of the river at the shore, and put in some pastures just back of the trees for rapid transit along the river screened by the trees. There is still enough cover to help if the second spawn is getting defenders coming in from another field, and just open enough to see the world around you. That has been one of the biggest complaints from GVers about the new AH3 trees, clutter and how they were implemented.
Once on the ground off the spawn testing in a GV, I keep going back and adding in extra pastures in the agrarian farm land tiles I use around feilds for GV spawns to protect the GVs from spawn camping. The Pacific tileset agrarian tiles have a lot of open space, but the spiral patterns make the trees bordering feilds\paddies seeing in straight lines ahead for GVers claustrophobic.
I keep the road systems in place as much as I can along with using them for logical bridge locations. Even running up to the roads at towns. Makes things look a little more realistic. In the last screen shot, from the air all those rice patties look like really open country. The boarders are filled with bamboo and bushes you can drive your tank through. But, you cannot see very far in the distance to try and not get ambushed. I'll have to add some more pasture to open up the vista for tankers while keeping it that closed inside the random spawn circle to protect the spawn from camping. It's balancing act of seeing long range while being able to duck into cover when it comes to GV combat with our GVers and bomb trucks.
River and maproom only small airfield waiting for bridges and spawns.
Brides and a spawn so I can test the ground offline. Notice the trees at the river shore and pastures behind them.
Offline over flying the area after updating the area with trees at the river shores and pastures behind them.
