Talking about levies, when I played Macedon, which also has levy pikes, they served my purposes well enough. They rarely broke, often because they had no time to break before I scored victory, and often because of the stupid AI, which much prefers to frontal-charge them. Levy pikes were my backbone for nearly forty turns, actually, and when I ended the campaign due to burnout in the 60th turn standard phalanx pikes only made up about 10% of my total infantry force. Levy pikes are pretty solid, but it your cavalry lets them down, they will let you down.

As with the Marquis of Roland, I am in awe at the speed of katank's katank. I rarely go that quickly at the start unless I'm Julii.