Every class can find "+" and "-" in terrain. You only have to think and you won't die like a bitch. 
Following that I can say :
You need to find the true power of friendship to win !And it will be just as useful to the conversation as your post. But now I have to make a real point or else I'll be more moronic than usual which is not my intention.
I'm in favor of this :
Of course those maps with hills shouldnt be randomed (I do not mean high mountains). As you said those random maps are mostly awful and make teams camp. By hills I mean a way for archers to be a bit better protected against horses. Cav either couche lances, hides behind their shields or directly attacks and do bumpkills quite often. With 5 IF, 18 STR and around 35 Body Armor and 30 Leg Armor I as Archer lose around 20% by a bump (courser, destrier) of a cav. Their slashes are usually 1hit. It is quite difficult to survive any cav attack without inf support or a lucky headshot of myself. There either a tree or a little hill does help me a lot.
But as I actually went more a Hybrid Archer who is able to fight in melee (not neccessarily against cav though), I do not complain about that. I just want some obstacles on a map (not just a plain grass map which is completely flat without many trees).
And this :
Agreed. I don't like all the "skirmish/siege" type maps on the battle servers. Open field battles are where the battles took place (unless it was a siege). "open field" = geographic terrain. There wasn't typically buildings and large rocks and fences to hide behind. You relied on terrain and your other units working in conjunction to hold the advantage.
I also don't like all the modern warfare type maps. Too many people running around thinking they are a one man army, when their actual strength lies in numbers (or at least running with a few people who can compliment your weaknesses and vice versa).
I disagree with your post about hills though. I think hills are very important...that the units should be using the terrain to their advantage on the maps. I don't think we need giant mountains (considering how slow you move on upward slopes), but some elevation changes are important if you remove the fences, houses, and other man made structures. As cavalry, I think it's completely fair that archers and infantry should be able to fight on the top of a hill that I can't do much to help out with. That's just plain smart.
But it really depends on the exact size and shape of the hills. Due to the way the engine handles terrain and movement, the same elevation can cause a dead stop and be lethal to cav, or just a small deceleration. The former tends to happen when the mapmaker forgot to use the terrain smoothing tool.
A map with smooth hills is usually the most balanced because both footmen teams will naturally stick together and head towards the hill, and that will naturally cause a concentration of ranged power in one spot, which is extremely lethal to cav.
In this situation only a well balanced team can win since :
- Archers need at least some inf to protect them in the odd chance of a massive cav charge, and also to force the enemy to open up, make the enemy cav move and expose itself, etc. cav also acts as a good anti-cav, or at least can engage enemy cav long enough without dying.
- Cav needs inf to distract the enemy and archers to shoot down the horse archers
- Inf needs archers to weaken the enemy shieldless inf and kill the enemy cav hunting the engaged melee.
Also generally speaking, archers gain the tactical advantages and force the other team to take action (like any form of artillery), melee take the blows and horsemen make the killing.
