This is an awesome tactic. One of my favorite! I do this every time! When you have your Phalanx in the streets lined up, its complete devestation for the enemy! I was also going to do a thread about this, but EOJ beat me to it.

Nice work!

Question: What if I'm outnumbered?

Answer: Your best bet is to just hold the main center complex with all phalanxes pointed outward with a reserve of cavalry of infantry at the opposite walls of the settlement where the enemy attacked. when the enemy are engaging your phalanxes, give them the backdoor bang!

^ EOJ's tactic is just fine. No need for anything else, except maybe some more Phalanx's in the centre, to answer your question!

Or check my Siege Defense Tactic #2

[This message has been edited by Undefeatable (edited 05-26-2006 @ 02:23 PM).]

I prefer phalanxes at breach points myself if I have enough of them for non-stone walls (if I only have a few I usually use the same tactic posted). The reason I prefer breach points is you can handle pretty well anything the enemy can throw at you with minimal losses bar the enemy general. I Position my troops in a 'V' shape covering the expected breach (at the start of a siege you can see how many rams the enemy has, and can usually predict fairly accurately where they're going to strike with them), with my general in between the various 'V' phalanxes with the main purpose of stoping them from routing (and towards the end of the game killing any routing enemies).
The reason I prefer this strategy is for a number of reasons; the enemy will never attack one breach point with their full army (a risk if you fortify the centre of the town), meaning your hoplites have less risk of being overwhelmed and therefore suffer fewer losses. You also effectively flank the enemy from two sides as they come through the breach point, and they are forced to turn to one of your phalanxes then (exposing their back to the other phalanx). As a result your phalanxes can usually handle enemy phalanxes with only minimal losses. The enemy will also come through at a small rate, meaning your hoplites suffer an even greater reduced risk of being overwhelmed. Positioning your troops close to the walls also has the added advantage of mostly protecting them from enemy missile units (which could inflict minor casualties if you fortified the middle).
Finally, you are able to predict where the enemy will go, and can stop any risk of the enemy splitting their force to go behind you (e.g. if fortifying near the centre with cavalry force to the side ready to flank, there's a risk the enemy may split their force, sending some troops to your cavalry, and others to the centre).
Once the enemy attacks your phalanxes, they'll eventually suffer so many casualties that they rout. At this point you can send your general to mop up any survivors, although one note of caution is if the enemy has a large force heavy cavalry with 2 hp (e.g. general) yet to engage, as if they charge basic militia hoplites you may suffer some casualties (and the risk of a rout) if your general is away.
With this strategy I've been able to defend settlements vastly outnumbered by the enemy, usually wiping out almost all of the attacking force. The only casualties I usually suffer are a handful of losses to militia hoplites and minor damage to my generals unit depending on how quickly I pursue the first routing units.
Of course I haven't had the chance to extensively test the strategy against high quality troops using just militia hoplites, but presumably if you made sure your hoplites were semi-decent against a powerful force you'd still be fine (e.g. don't try defending a breach with 2 militia hoplites when against a force of elephants!)

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It's because I made it, or at least trumpetted it loudly on the forums.

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It works fine anyway. I've beaten 2 full stack leigons with this.

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In my experience my hoplites never took more than 100 casulties, and that was with Nile spearmen.
The defend the-breach thing is fine, and a good tactic, but what happens if you have:
3 sacred band infantry
2 Sacred band cavalry
And the enemy has 4 rams, and lots of men?

Now you see when to use this strat