Agreed, Watchman
I say maniple and I will now say why
What exactly is a fair "fight"? A fair "battle" certainly does not exist and for the following reasons:
Grounds:
Putting elevation aside, fighting on flat plain is advantageous to the phalanx so it's not fair for the Romans. Fighting in woods is disadvantageous to the phalanx so it's not fair for them.
Fighting style:
No really who will come out on top. Like good old Polybius said, a Roman maniple can fight by itself without support, while a phalanx can't. If a Roman maniple meet a phalanx even in the open, it'll just surround the phalanx and chuck their pila at the phalanx rear and then fall on their rear too. Heck a phalanx can't even beat skirmishers alone. Remember the traditional hoplite that lacked maneuerability? The Romans got kicked by who were they the samnites or something when they used the hoplite. To match the samnite's maneuverbility the Romans went maniple and changed equipments. The phalanx is even less maneuverable than the hoplite and you expect them to win?
So you can say "well it's not fair, the Romans broke their traditional formation and fought in a wierd style." Well firstly, fighting IN formation is advantageous to the phalanx so not fair for the Romans. Secondly, it's something they easily could have done if they came upon a phalanx 1 on 1. Thirdly, it is likely they did just that in tiny skirmishes against phalanx stupid enough to leave their army.
So you might say "we're talking about army"
Ok let's say we're talking about army vs army.
As I had experienced myself from hours of looking at the EB map to figure out a good maneuvering strategy for my AAR (novel), maneuvering is 80% of the battle in pre-modern times during and after the Peloponnesian War in Europe and after the Spring and Automn period in the far east, and who knows when in middle east. Before these periods armies said "It's war. Ok let's meet somewhere and fight" and met and fought (not counting the Persian invasion). After it (and also during the Peloponnesian War) it's "It's war. Ok let's go find a pass or a hill or something."
Now we have maneuvering. Armies had problems even finding each other, and they most certainly were not obliged to fight whenever an enemy nears as they had been before by the rules of war. If your side found themselves is an unstuable situation or can find an even more advantageous one, and the enemy is far away that they can't fall on your back, there's no reason you can't just march to somewhere else.
As battles are now not decided by fighting but by seeing who can outmarch each other and get the best ground, who will win? A phalanx army who can fight in 1/10 grounds and win or the maniple who can win in 9/10 grounds?
If we were to give to two Alexanders, both having equal experience with both forms of fighting, an equally sized army respectively. Then we throw them in a provice in which there's two cities one at each end of the province and these are the base of the two armies operations. This province shall be land-locked and have equal amounts of all types of grounds scattered all over the place and of course towns farming villages and the such. Now we have a fair fight, a fair CAMPAIGN.
Like Polybius said, to even avoid a defeat the phalanx army need to stick to a flat plain, in which case the maniple army will simply fan out and take towns and cut the supply line of the phalanx army or even take the city (and maniple is better at sieges too). If the phalanx army try to disperse to prevent it, then we end up with the 1 vs 1 situation we have already seen above.
Remember war is not just about tactics. In fact tactics is probably the least important part of war. It is just the flashiest. We have to remember strategy and logistics, both of which plays a larger role. As Theodore Dodge said: "Ammateurs study tacitcs. Experts study logistics."
So after we remember that we can look again. And really? Who's better?
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