Surga Mtn. Overwatch

The openness and accessibility of the mountain here makes for some particularly epic battles, as the entire plain can become choked with vehicles and infantry attempting to make their way to the bunker that forms the center of the control zone.

If you can guess what route enemy vehicles will be coming along, you can lie in wait with a rocket launcher and destroy them as they pass.

Each of the team’s bases has an impressive number of vehicles to use to gain access to the mountaintop; you’ll obviously want to hit the helicopters first and try to get them up to the bunker as quickly as possible. If you’re piloting the larger helicopter, try to land long enough for any passengers to get out; if you notice that your minigunners bail as well, follow them onto the ground, but if they stay aboard, take the heli up again and use it to frustrate enemy advances to the bunker.

If you’re inside the bunker itself, you’ll probably want to vary your activities between lying prone on the floor and using your weapons to fire on anyone who approaches. Riflemen and medics are particularly appropriate here; riflemen can use their AT4s on any enemy vehicles that come up, while the medics will obviously be useful in bringing enemies back to life. It’s fairly easy to get routed, though, if enemy infantry manage to stage a coordinated assault on the position, so don’t get too frustrated. Just concentrate on getting back to the bunker and returning the favor; you have plenty of tools at your disposal to do so.

Awan Atoll

The KOTH zone for this map is inordinately large, and definitely transforms the entire bay into a war zone as time goes on. There’s virtually no way to clean out the enemy from it entirely once they get a few soldiers in, as there are simply too many hiding spots, both inside the structures and in the forest, to check everything thoroughly, although you’ll definitely want to try. The emphasis, therefore, is on getting to the zone as quickly as possible, and with enough soldiers aboard your helicopter to spread out quickly.

After the first minute or so of gameplay, things will settle down into a near-constant firefight within the bay itself. Controlling the Citadel Island Fortification in the southwestern corner of the zone will help you repel any ships that make a foolhardy attempt to enter the bay through the southern opening, but you’ll have to be wary of enemy snipers; even if the readout shows zero enemies in the zone, that doesn’t necessarily mean that someone’s not drawing a bead on you from further out. It’s especially important to have a couple of engineers with Stingers at the ready to take down any attempts by the enemy to land a helicopter on the island. Helicopters won’t always go directly to the bay, though, so you’ll want to position yourself atop the hill on the island to give yourself a better chance at spotting enemy helicopters as they fly around.

All in all, though, the team that manages to get into the zone first will have a marked advantage, especially if they manage to secure the bay itself and keep a constant supply of soldiers incoming through the southern gap. Try not to get caught up in ship-to-ship fighting if you can avoid it, especially not out in the open. You can park a patrol boat inside the bay, however, and use that to monitor the southern pass.

Kubil Oil Tank Farm

The Oil Tank Farm has a more level control zone than do most KOTH maps, and the inclusion of two PSPs in the zone’s immediate proximity makes this an infantry-centered battle. Your first priority as a team will be to grab control of one of the PSPs and use it as a base from which to wade across the shallow water into the oil tanks. You’ll only have one helicopter in your base, but you can use it to drop a few soldiers inside the zone to get the timer started before zapping over to the nearest PSP and starting the countdown on that.

Within the zone itself, fighting is generally a riflemen and gunner affair, as the darkness serves as effective natural cover. The nearness of the PSPs obviates the need for medics, for the most part. The terrain itself, with the exception of the oil tanks, is fairly open, so each team can expect heavy casualties. It’s important to keep one or two soldiers in a hiding spot somewhere in the zone, to avoid having your timer reset, but there are few decent ones to be found. If you can jump out of a helicopter onto the top of one of the oil tanks and lie prone, there’s precious little that can kill you besides a sniper on top of one of the hills around the oil tanks.

Moreau Water Castle

The castle here should be the center of some amazing firefights, as it features a host of passages in which to lose yourself. The feature of the map that will most often decide the balance of power, however, is the two PSPs on either side of the castle itself. If each team manages to control one of these, the fighting within the castle itself can get pretty intense, albeit in a deadlocked kind of manner, as there are quite a few places within the castle to hide.

The structure in the center of the castle is a predictable magnet for people looking to crouch down within the zone. The top floor, especially, gives you a few good places to lay prone and watch the approaches, especially if you camp out just above the staircase leading up. The exterior walls of the castle are also rife with small rooms that you can use to camp out or to snipe from the windows onto soldiers in the courtyards below.

You can control the entire castle if you overlook the two entry points, but this is fairly pointless, as the control zone extends beyond the castle walls on either side, letting enemies keep the timer going by lying prone near the wall. Since the interior of the castle has so many hiding spots, the obviousness of this ploy can sometimes go undetected for awhile, especially in games with fewer players, so give it a whirl.