AoS in Island/Jungle Setting

I recently rejoined my clan after being away from warcraft for a while, and Im updating my AoS (Battle for Atlantis). I have completely redone the terrain and I need some advice on making it come alive. This terrain is a WIP so bear with me.

I'm having trouble working with the center lanes and the outer rings.

I'd like the center lanes to remain as shallow water but I'm stuck on spicing them up, partly due to the small size and because of lack of water doodads that look good. Boats/ships and broken stuff in the water doesnt fit here.

With the outer lanes, they are shallows, with raised terrain as you can see in the pics below, and the issue here is size also. Trees just feel a bit un-natural here and they would need to be farther off the shorline.

Without enlarging these areas, does anyone have advice for spicing them up? I guess Im looking for advice on terraining shallow areas.

More height variety and skip the grassy dirt stuff. In general it looks nice but bare, remove/replace the shrubs or whatever that is around the islands.

Coral Bed / Coral Arch? Maybe some other inaccessible islands with some weird NPCs doing fun stuff. I don't see how broken boats wouldn't fit though.

Smooth those cliffs. Fast!!

Thanks for the input,

I've changed it up a good deal, the lack of shoreline type doodads and suitable plants was a big turn off so I went with a different approach.

Interesting Layout. Maps looks small though fer an Aos

thanks, it's actually fairly large, 192x192.

Here is an updated shot, as I mentioned before I changed it up quite a bit, opting for sunken city-cityscape rather than a beachy/island.

Still got a ways to go, but I had to redo all the pathing and set up stuff, now I can fill it in a bit.

There are pathing blockers that you cant see, the walkable area is only on the green tiles, can't shoot across lanes.

On the arches, in-game, you walk that direction head on, so you are under the arches and can see everything. But ya, mass arches are kinda boring I agree, it's just kinda fun to run through a tunnel in that area. i havnt decided if those will stay.

check these out and tell me what you think.

Offtopic : How did you removed that black thing when you zoom out? Sorry for being a newbie.

Advanced - View Entire Map

Go to Advanced -> View Entire Map?

I dont like the spam arches either.. Its a good base terrain, but it really needs some doodads and height variation.

ya, that was the general opinion of the arches from pretty much everyone, and they are long gone now. Here is an update. These are a couple days old, but you can see where I've begun raising the terrain.

Whys everything square and straight.. kinda ugly.