Since we're on the topic of Phalanxes...

What you could always do is use the a Flying Phalanx

RTW, being as historically inaccurate as it is, allows you to rapidly form phalanxes and unform them as well. This means you can negate one of the two main weaknesses of the Phalanx, agility; the other being unidirectional fighting.

So you can use this to give you phalanxes a reasonable speed.

Thus, if you play a horse/phalanx faction IE Macedon. You can use your superior cav to escort whole units of phalanxes behind the enemy. From there you can form up and sandwich some poor bastard between two phalanxes. It really makes you feel bad for those poor guys.

You can do alot of things by using phalanx units like this.