It looks like the floor texture of the background outside of the map haven't been changed to the brownish mud floor of the map. That's really ruining the environment contrast, so is there a possibility to change that?
I also have a suggestion regarding smoke. Would you be able to make the smoke from explosions stay for a longer period of time, and then gradually, slowly dissolve? I believe that with the reduced smoke checked it would not cause serious lag problems anyway, however it will give the people under heavy fire an advantage of being somewhat hidden in the smoke which is also realistic.
As much as that'd be great to do, huge amounts of smoke kills everything in the M&B engine. Just think of NW when someone sets off 15 crates or BearForceII events crashing because of the grenades or rockets.
I think it's better to have a working game that can handle the sheer amount of explosions that were in WWI without crashing on a 200 man server.
Even though in the artillery demonstration it made it a little harder to see the explosions, that's a quick loading cannon that can certainly saturate an environment. 5 cannons quickfiring into an open field, trench mortars getting off as many rounds as it can, and men throwing grenades at the enemy - all that default NW smoke would probably crash some of the people trying to make it through the bombardment! It's a fantastic idea and I'm with you on it, but just not on Iron Europe.