I can't even get the merest foothold on even the FIRST scenario, good lord, it's impossible IMO!
Anyone actually done the campaign without cheats?

Can you reduce the difficulty?

Nope, this was on the lowest difficulty setting.....

it doesn't matter anyway, because now I've run into a permanent crash problem. There's not much point continuing with the game at all, whether that be campaign, skirmish, whatever. Looks like it's the inevitable "memory leak" problem, so there's no point in it, I'm one of the many whom MAX doesn't work for! The game's broken! And yes, this is M.A.X ONE I'm talking about, the one everyone is praising, not M.A.X 2! Just how bad *is* MAX 2 then?!

I finished the campaign without too many problems. The biggest issue I had was in the third mission I think. Mission 1 isn't hard at all as long as you don't over extend your units. It was on normal difficulty, time limit disabled using simultanious turn based. I've finished the campaign, training missions and all 24 single scenarios with these settings. I did get crashes but had no problem continuing from the autosave.

And MAX 2 is very bad. Pathfinding is pure garbage, selecting multiple units are a pain, using a group number will center the camera on the group and the crappy aesthetic ruined MAX2 for me. It's hidden from my games library along with KKND2 and teenagent :P

To fix the crash issue, use the MAX 1.04 executable patched with DOS32a extender instead of DOS4GW, there is a thread in this forum for this.

Also, in your DOSBOX settings set the RAM amount much higher - to 64mb at least, Im not sure if DOSBox allows for more these days, 64mb used to be the limit, should be enough for MAX.