the contestants are as clueless as ever
Gawd, tell me about it. They are either the general, just shouting their heads off and doing no good for the team, or they are the captains, who either just stand there and occasionally go 'The horses are dead. Oops.' or miss damn obvious things e.g the enemy phalanx might be turned around, and rather than notice this and use some cavalry they got standing around to ram into the phalanx rear, they just ignore this and keep piling men into the front of the phalanx. And then you've got your usual captain, who just doesn't have a clue what they're doing. If you think about, the few who actually win, in reality, it would have been a hollow victory. They suffer huge losses in the battle, and only just scrape through. In the days afterwards, there would have been some form of counter attack, in which they would have been finished off.