How much do you rely on hand-to-hand combat?

A pet peeve of mine since I first played Napoleon, has been how the AI seems to me to rely a bit too heavily on hand-to-hand bayonet fighting as opposed to ranged musketfire. This does particularly seem to be the the case in bigger battles with full-ish stacks - in other words, late-game and Custom Battles, mostly.

However, the thought has occurred to me - maybe that's how the game is supposed to be played? Maybe CA thought the game would feel too samey if the soldiers would only stand and shoot at each other, or something? (Of course, that doesn't excuse the fact that most large open field-battles tend to end up with a huge brawl in the middle of the field as if the soldiers were medieval knights.)

So my question is: how much do you people rely on mass hand-to hand combat in regular gameplay? I'm talking singleplayer, multiplayer, whatever.

I'll goto melee against skermishers / light infantry or generally anyone inferior to my unit in melee stats that might get larger kills on me in a shoot out. It's also fantastic for disruption / causing routs / delaying actions.

If you have cavalry superiority, infantry melee is far more effective, as their infantry will lose ability to form square. As French, this was my main tactic against British, who would otherwise maul my infantry in a shootout. It required good timing on the charges though because the British infantry had superior melee stats.

I tend to use it only as a last resort. Usually I get line infantry to fire volleys until the enemy starts to waver, then I charge them in. It's a bit textbook but it seems to work decently.

It depends on the situation and what nation you play. The Russian musketeers are usually inferior in a firefight but superior in melee, so it's a couple of volleys and charge with them if you can't outflank the enemy.

Armed citizens are cheap (free) canonfodder, so overwhelm the enemy units on the flanks and artillery with charging citizens, no matter the casualties.

But in general charging with infantry is a bit of a desperate measure, so choose wisely and keep an eye on them,- you don't want them to overdo it.

Cheers,

Quite agree, I don't use melee until I have a good reason: decoy, gain time or use armed citizenry which consumes its ammunitions quickly

Originally Posted by Chorius

Quite agree, I don't use melee until I have a good reason: decoy, gain time or use armed citizenry which consumes its ammunitions quickly

Excactly

Same here - even with the French I only use melee when my line infantry are out of ammo or when I have lots of armed citizenry who seem marginally less useless in melee than in a firefight

I use melee almost 100% of the time with all factions, only time i don't is when i have a melee unit distracting and i come around and flank the enemies then i use musket fire.