Editing Hoplite (section)

==The Problem with Hoplites==
There are four, or rather five, issues with Hoplites; 
*First is like any nonprofessional army there are some times of the year they just will not fight, namely fall when the citizens need to go home to harvest crops or starve (or in the case of Sparta, who were professional soldiers, they couldn't go too far away from home to prevent slave revolts, as slaves were always in higher abundance than Spartiates even when all Spartiates were at home);
*The second issue with Hoplites is that the Phalanx has trouble keeping formation over rough ground, and without the formation a Hoplite is almost completely out matched by most other infantry types since the other guy can just get within the spears reach and use his axe to split a Hoplite in half, which is why Romans abandoned a Hoplite system early in its history. Italian hills and terrain were not at all conducive to Phalanx warfare like in Greece;
*The third issue with the Phalanx is that it disintegrates if flanked, the spears become useless and the tightly packed formation means it's hard for the men to escape or readjust facing to combat the new threat (think about how hard it is to swivel a pole taller than you while trying not to bump into a dense crowd);
*Fourth issue is that due to the phalanx being designed around not only protecting yourself but also the one on your left with your shield (hence their size), the right side of the phalanx is vulnerable as naturally, the guy on the right only has his own shield to protect himself with; and 
*The fifth really big problem with the Hoplites, and their biggest issue, was nothing with the Hoplites themselves, and more their commanders. After Alexander the Great's 8 year whirlwind tour of the known world, the Macedonian combined arms approach to warfare was dropped in favor of just having big phalanxes, and since everyone was just using Phalanxes this was not a problem. But when the Roman manipular system of battle (80-man companies who can make independent calls on the battlefield famously called "''A phalanx with joints''") came into fruition, along with the revolutionary quinqux formation (checkerboard formation that allows reserves to fill in the gaps created by lines, and for entire units to cycle through with the reduced risk of fatigue), the unsupported phalanxes found themselves outmaneuvered and outmatched.