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The Macedonian phalanx must cooperate closely with the cavalry, and it is not easy to win by relying on the phalanx alone, and the Macedonians will line up the phalanx in an oblique formation, that is, a right-angled triangle or right-angled trapezoid, and the oblique face outward, so that they will encircle the enemy from a certain side according to specific needs.

Normally, the enemy will not be killed immediately in front of the Macedonian phalanx, unless they are charged by the Macedonian phalanx, which is rarely seen in war, and the Macedonian phalanx can be united as a whole, pushed back to the front, and then rushed through like a wall.

The rest of the non-phalanx enemies were as sharp as lawnmowers, and most of them would be trapped by them, trying their best to dodge the numerous spearheads, and this was exactly what the Macedonian general wanted, and the enemy was placed on a large board, and the knife was the Macedonian cavalry.

The Macedonian cavalry in the war was very strong and generally outperformed their first enemy, which gave them the ability to confront and defeat (drag) the enemy's cavalry, and then go around their heads and strike hard from behind, like chopping meat on a cutting board with a knife.

In addition, the Macedonian guerrilla infantry, who were mainly light infantry with round shields and short swords and light armor, were good at close quarters, and their main task was to defend the flanks of the phalanx or to attack with the cavalry.

A very important and crucial issue is involved here, that is, the coordination of the arms of the Macedonian phalanx; it has never been a Macedonian phalanx composed of a single pikeman, but in essence a multi-arm phalanx composed of standing infantry, light infantry, cavalry, and auxiliaries.

Among them, the standing army was more numerous, and they carried Macedonian spears (four meters long, two-handed, more than 5.5 meters in the later period; the spears had counterweights at the end for balancing, which doubled as a backup weapon in the event of a broken spear. ), a round shield with a diameter of sixty centimeters.

The shields in the hands of the soldiers in the phalanx protect the left side of their own side and the right side of the bodies of their adjacent comrades, and once the soldier in the front row falls, the soldier in the second row will quickly fill in the gap left by him.

The soldiers of the first row generally squatted and pointed their spears forward, while the soldiers of the second row put their spears on the shoulders of the soldiers of the first row, which increased the lethality of the cavalry facing the front, and the essence of the whole phalanx tactics was that all the soldiers worked together and marched together, and those who escaped from the battle were punished with the most severe punishment.

Light infantry, their spears will be shorter in length, their shields will be larger in diameter (which will cover the whole body of a kneeling soldier), and their armor will be slightly lighter, but they will be more mobile.

The cavalry, a heavy cavalry composed of young nobles, was armed with a Macedonian spear, which was often rested on the shoulder with the head slightly downward when waiting for battle, and when charging, the spear was stabbed downward, and after stabbing the first enemy, the spear was often left in the enemy's body and not drawn, and then the battle was continued with the sword, and the spear was retrieved after the battle was over.

Auxiliaries, lightly or unarmoured, with javelins, bows and arrows, and catapults as their main weapons, were tasked with assisting the phalanx infantry in delivering long-range strikes to the enemy's attacking troops, and covering the retreat of the phalanx infantry when necessary.

Summing up the advantages of the Macedonian phalanx, it is nothing more than its own high mobility, which can bravely rush towards the enemy with a complete horizontal formation, and deal a heavier blow to the enemy who has not yet recovered from the cavalry attack.

The heavily armored soldiers who could not escape the pursuit of the Macedonian phalanx could not move as fast on the battlefield as the Macedonians in formation, and the enemy light infantry who could outpace the Macedonian phalanx in speed could not defeat the Macedonian phalanx, which created the prestige of the phalanx.

However, the Macedonian phalanx also had an Achilles' heel, which was that it could be killed if it tried not to have a unified battlefield and attacked only its flanks or back, not its front.

Once the opponent breaks through the flank, it is difficult for the spearmen in the spear formation to resist the attack of the enemy warriors, and the phalanx's ability to deal with dense arrow formations is very weak, whether it is a light cavalry archer or an infantry group, as long as they can disperse the light infantry, the spearmen in the array are almost at the mercy of shooting.

For example, in 371 B.C. in Europe on Earth, the Theban strategist Epaminonda used a concentrated force of 16 layers in depth in Luctra to penetrate from the right side of the phalanx, and as a result, he broke the phalanx of the more powerful Spartan heavy infantry.

First of all, this kind of phalanx is not an all-round formation, and if you have an all-round defense of an all-round formation, how should you arrange it? Everyone stands around a center and faces all sides...... But what can you do but stand still?

The all-round spear phalanx developed in the West and was also used by Swedish spearmen in the late Middle Ages, but the war at that time was different from this time, and the Swedes consciously retreated when they encountered the attack of the crossbow, because the all-round defense could only stand still.

One of the more glaring flaws is that it takes a long time to arrange the troops in all directions, so the question arises, who will arrange the troops in such a formation at the beginning of the battle, and who will have so much time to arrange the troops?

See how the Romans defeated this phalanx in the Second Macedonian War, the Roman legions were organized to act as a single human unit, note that they were not closely aligned, and when the Romans encountered the nearest threat, such as the flanks, they could easily and simply face the front in any direction, just by turning around.

Although Alexander's Macedonian phalanx had its own unique flexibility, being able to transform into a variety of formations to suit various terrain and enemy formations, in fact it was a bit cumbersome to achieve this in a dense phalanx, with their spears being very cumbersome to use, not to mention quick turns, which were much more flexible in Alexander's time than the Romans.

It is true that the Macedonian phalanx crushed the Romans' left flank at the beginning of the battle, but trouble soon followed, the battlefield was uneven, and the Macedonian phalanx struggled to maintain formation in pursuit of the Romans' left flank.

While the right flank of the Romans repelled the left flank of the Macedonians, the victorious right flank of the dense Macedonian phalanx could not turn around, and the Romans bypassed the front of the dense phalanx, and their advantage in the use of short swords and large shields was immediately apparent.

It was impossible to keep the dense phalanx in front of the phalanx, and when there was a gap in the phalanx, the Romans attacked the phalanx from the flank, and how could a soldier with a spear up to 6.5 meters long be an opponent for the Romans with a short sword and a large shield?

At this time, it was an inch short and an inch dangerous, and the Macedonians huddled together couldn't even wield their spears, not to mention that except for the first row, the Macedonian soldiers in the back row did not have heavy armor and shields, and the victory or defeat of the war was already doomed at this moment.

This is also why the last time Bai Feng was arranging his troops to face the enemy forces of the Eastern Alliance, he deployed 3,000 soldiers with Germanic berserkers as the core on the empty right flank of the pikemen phalanx of the Cheetah Legion, in order to avoid this situation.