ORIGINAL: ijozic
The scenario designer is who creates that slice of time where the action is in doubt.
I see your point, but I was not talking about single scenarios, but entire campaigns.
For example, can you dig out some interesting historical scenarios from e.g. Desert Storm, yes, you can. Can you make an interesting historical campaign? I would say no, not without significant balancing changes.
Don't need to change the balance of forces at all. Just set creative options and victory conditions for both sides.
In a simulation that recreates history does a player win if he achieves what happened historically - maybe - maybe not. Depends. In Desert Storm the allies rolled over the Iraqis as if they weren't even there. Boring to play? Not if you have to do better than that. Maybe you have to do it in half the time or with half the troops against the historical opfor. Maybe you've got to keep going until you get to Baghdad. There are myriad options. What if you had to play as the Iraquis. What would you have done different if you'd been Sadaam Hussein? I can think of a few things that IMO would have driven the Coalition forces right out of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Make those available to a player and see what happens.
Any scenario can be made interesting - even with massively unbalanced forces. One just has to be creative with options and victory conditions.