Hopefully this is not superfluous due to repetition, it is a screenshot I took of PHL after 30mins of playing.
Now that the first 3 flags are no more locked to "uncap" one by one, the Germans see that they can fall into the American's backs and always recap one of the first 3 flags by sneaking through backwards.
The effect is, that it is near to impossible for the Americans to cap all first 3 flags and "lock" that sector to unlock the next flags.
The times we played on PHL the Americans were not able to cross the river because of that.
I would opt for a reinstatement of the former way of locking the first 3 flags (one by one).