If you can do that then great, there is no such things as a "not supposed to happen", its up to the player to decide how they spend that first minute or so.

No one seems to play with defenders off any more but I did have a few games with them off many patches back and it makes for a very different game. Much faster, and you can harass earlier etc. It's a fun way to change things up. Slightly off topic, but you reminded me with the fast expansion. 

Yeah I realise that. The 2nd part was just a tangent as you expanded fast and it reminded me of my few games with defenders off 

In MP, I've won a lot of games due to the player trying to fast expand.

Brian (our AI developer) is working on some rather nasty counter-strategies as well.

Many new players in Company of Heroes would do the same thing and learned the hard way that this is easily countered.

Ranked matches have terrain exposed.

Unranked (custom) MP games can be set to whatever you want. The majority of custom games that I have played in MP have been exposed.

I prefer to have the map hidden, which adds to the surprise when your scouts meet in the battlefield.

There are actually plenty of maps where the rick is possible but it's just SO hard. You must take every extra second. This game has very slow unit acceleration so the small things like keeping your engineer at the edge of the node he's getting before moving to the next one and giving your move order a bit before finishing the capture point as there's this huge delay before your engie gets the move order and starts slowly accelerating makes a difference.