Spear units fighting out of phalanx?

[Jackie Chan's Brother Wang...]

I'm just curious, after playing Shogun 2 with it's Yari Samurai, were there, or could there be, any units in Rome 2 that used a spear in combat but without fighting in a phalanx formation? I'm looking back to Rome 1 but I can't think of any. It seemed like the spear was restricted to just a formation fighting weapon, while the sword or axe were the weapons of 1 on 1 melee fighting, I'm not sure how accurate this is for the time period, could be very accurate.

[Nicolaos]

Well not really, they had barbaric spear bands, rOman triarii, eastern spearmen, egyptian spear men and more in RTW
Problem about a phalanx is that its not really flexible, if it gets flanked it gets smashed easily

It also depends on the definition of a phalanx, if a shield wall formed of spear units is fully considered a phalanx or not...

[Marcus Aemilius Lepidus]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tk89Z_PsQs

look at 4:50. Shows really god some stuff you can do with an old german spear.

[bobbin]

Yep, a lot of soldiers used spears outside of formation. You wouldn't see the Macedonian Sarissa or the average Greek Doru being used outside of a phalanx as they were too long, but shorter spears were widely used in may places.