​Battlefield Role: Heavy Spear Infantry
Weapons: Long spear and hoplon shield. Kopis sword as sidearm.
Outfit: Depends on the City-State. Usually Linothorax for lighter regiments and Steel Cuirasses for heavier regiments.
Skill level: Proficiency at fighting in tight phalanx formation.
Affiliation: The League of the Athenian City-States
Strengths: When deployed in Phalanx formation, veteran Hoplites are invulnerable to infantry, cavalry and ranged units alike. Only heavy artillery fire can crush their shieldwall from the front.
Weaknesses: Due to their slow movement speed and compromised maneuverability, irregular terrain and flanking tactics are the bane of a Hoplite. If caught out of formation, a Phalanx will collapse.
Athenian Hoplites
As empowered citizens who openly take part on their democratic municipal senate through their own direct votes, the citizens of the Athenian League's autonomous City-States have both the right and the duty to bear arms and defend their homes.
It isn't a compulsory military service per say, but to earn their citizenship itself, every Athenian amazon must undergo a basic training in the local barracks for at least 1 year during their youth in order to properly learn how to fight. At the end of this military drill, they may opt to either become reservists and get back to their ordinary civilian lives, or to continue in the army at their City-States' Military Academies, where they shall train harder to become actual professional soldiers.
Many of them desire to remain in the standing military because of the nice pay rates and high social status of soldiering life. Often the sheer number of wannabe soldiers actually surpass the available demand for new soldiers in the regiments, which enables the officers to choose the best available candidates as their new recruits. A process incredibly smoother than other regions' compulsory draft in times of war.
Therefore, the entire region benefits from highly talented and motivated standing armies, composed of the very best amazons any city-state can ever hope to muster. Each regiment is conditioned to fight as one big mass of spears and shields, advancing together and bulldozing anything standing on their Phalanxes path. Arrows and javelins bouncing from their impenetrable shields, while their spears impale anyone stupid enough to meet their ranks from the front.
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Because up to 4 lines of spearheads stand in between the enemy and the front line of Hoplites. Vast reinforced shields overlapping to protect both its wielder and the woman to the left, while the other ranks cover anything that may fall from above with their own shields. Shall a Hoplite fall, another moves swiftly to take her place. Together, they are invincible. But separated...
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Shall a Phalanx advance into irregular terrain, it will lose synchrony and be severely weakened. Flanking is also a huge weakness, for this formation leaves the sides and the rear completely exposed and vulnerable as all shields and spears are deployed facing the front. Thus any wise Athenian Amazon general avoids uneven terrain, bringing the enemy to face them on flatlands and protecting the flanks of their armies with the heaviest troops they have. Because as long as the flanks are secure, the unrelenting front line will hold their ground.