It wasn't so much that they could trust/rely on their helots before; heck, most of their constant military training (aaarrrggh!!!) was aimed at keeping the helot down. The labor of the helots allowed the Spartans to focus on their military abilities, and those abilities ensured the subservience of the helots...so sad...

Anyway, it would be very cool if the KH could institute a Lykurgan system in Sparte as some sort of reform. Maybe start Sparte off as a colony as well, and then its up to the player whether to upgrade to a type 1 Lykurgan system in Sparte, and that could lead to unique Spartan units unavailable in non-Type 1 governments? There might be a better way to do that I suppose, but its an idea, and would be really risky for the player to do, but would (with good Spartan units at least) pay nice dividends.