Squad Battles not dead if I can help it!!

[Mowgli]

As an improvised remedy, it would be cool if there were more scenarios designed for PBEM in mind. Both sides need to offer interesting gameplay.

The games from Winter War until the end were all designed with both AI and PBEM in mind.  When the testing team put them through their paces, PBEMs were played to try to balance the game from both sides.  The earlier games, (ES, AoTR, VN and TOD, PW and PAF) stock scenarios are not well balanced at all.  A lot of the custom scenarios are.  A rule of thumb in most cases is that if you're playing versus the AI, always be the attacker.  The AI in defense isn't bad, but on the offense, even with good AI scripting from the designer, it tends to do stupid things, especially the longer a game goes.

Back in the day I was told that the % of people who play the game against the AI versus PBEM is very heavily skewed towards the AI side.

Thanks for the information. Alas this is also part of the problem: I need to go to a forum and have someone tell me which scenarios are worth playing in multiplayer. Just imagine how potential players pick one of the "not PBEM-aproved" titles and get disappointed by their multiplayer experience.  

A proper gold version should add very clear information on how the scenario is supposed to be played in the scenario description. In some titles this is the case, in others, it's not (the same is true for the Campaign series, by the way).

Also, scenarios might be better balanced. But still I wonder if they're fun for the defending side. Often it seems like the defender is positioned in good cover at the start of the scenario and all he can do is to choose which enemy unit to fire at. Particularly for the defending player, a "deployment phase" would add a lot of interest to many scenarios.