Gallic Spearmen

Summary
Spearmen are a light infantry brigade available to the Gallic faction group a little later in the game. They offer a less cost-effective but more defensive alternative to Gallic Skirmishers, which can be useful in certain specific situations such as sieges.

"Equipped with shields and spears, they are better armoured but less offensive and slower than skirmishers. Using a battleline stance, spearmen are well suited for blocking enemy charges, or to hold enemy units in place while lighter troops attempt to flank."

- In-game Description

History
Originally, Gallic warfare seems to have centered around small amounts of wealthy warriors that were equipped as swordsmen. Later on, an increasing population would lead the Gallic armies to swell their ranks with larger amounts of commoners armed as spearmen or missile troops.

Tactics
Spearmen have comparable but more defensive stats compared to Gallic Skirmishers, but are significantly more expensive in both gold and recruits. As such, spearmen are much less cost-effective in most battlefield roles and don't justify their higher cost and barracks requirement in most situations. However, they can prove useful in specific situations where units need to tank missile fire for extended periods of time, such as during sieges. Players will likely not find it useful to field large amounts of these troops, however, as Skirmishers are more cost-effective and the later Naked Skirmishers and Noble Swordsmen have comparable or superior defenses while being better overall.

Gallic Spearmen, despite requiring a barracks and not being available in the earliest stages of the game, have comparable stats to the early-game spearmen of other faction groups, though with a larger brigade size but also a higher cost, offering a similar degree of cost-effectiveness. The fact that Gallic factions can't recruit this brigade immediately but instead need to grow their cities and invest resources into the barracks upgrade first, is therefore a disadvantage of the Gallic faction group, although the very good Gallic Skirmishers are more useful in most situations anyway.