Would infantry charges actually confer much advantage?

[Ithoriel]

In Ancient battles the bulk of the battle seems to be the main bodies indulging in a shoving match until one side breaks and is butchered. Different, of course, if one or both sides are primarily cavalry.

As a very broad generalisation, it seems to me that the closer in time to the present you get, the briefer hand-to-hand combat gets.

[mmcv]

In Ancient battles the bulk of the battle seems to be the main bodies indulging in a shoving match until one side breaks and is butchered. Different, of course, if one or both sides are primarily cavalry.

As a very broad generalisation, it seems to me that the closer in time to the present you get, the briefer hand-to-hand combat gets.

Yeah that's been my perspective too. Guns really shifted the paradigm as they became more prevalent. That's one interesting thing about trying to model Sengoku Jidai Japan as it really went from medieval to early modern at an accelerated rate. Guns became highly effective at battlefield control but most fights were still finished at the spearpoint. So for them melee is pretty brutal, whereas the medieval rules has a little more back and forth and resilience to the units for close combat.

[John Cook]

As a very broad generalisation, it seems to me that the closer in time to the present you get, the briefer hand-to-hand combat gets.

It is well known that "they don't like it up 'em"