Warspear was one of the first things i loomed in Khudan, no army of ours goes without it.
There really is no excuse not to support hoplites in strat battles, they are one of the most versatile roles.
yes, war spear is very nice for any shielder, but i say trident because it's so ridiculously cheap ... if people want to buy war spear / red tassel spear that's great, but trident literally costs --nothing-- and you can defend yourself against cavalry ...
)
if every infantryman carries some form of cavalry protection (even a trident), it makes it that much harder for the enemy cavalry to utterly own the battlefield.
As for those people who are saying longspears are cavalry protection, well, they protect small areas sure, but the enemy cavalry just targets the guys not covered by the longspears !! and if there's just 2, 3 longspears defending an area and 8 enemy cavalry, they will just swamp the area with cav ... everyone needs to be able to defend themselves, you can't just rely on a handful of pikemen ^^