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A close-formed military formation is difficult to maintain over rough terrain. - (Assassin of Gor, Chapter 21, Sentence #294)

Moving back warily I remained as close as I could to the picket, but out of reach, hoping to draw yet another Warrior prematurely into attack. They remained together. As a Warrior, though it was not to my advantage, I found this satisfying. A close-formed military formation is difficult to maintain over rough terrain. Indeed, the Torian Squares, which I have mentioned, common among Gorean infantries, with their superior mobility and regrouping capacities, had, long ago, made the phalanxes of such cities as Ar and, in the south, Turia, obsolete. The Gorean phalanx, like its predecessors of Earth, consisted of lines of massed spearmen, carrying spears of different lengths, forming a wall of points; it attacked on the run, preferably on a downgrade, a military avalanche, on its own terrain and under optimum conditions, invincible; the Torian Squares had bested the phalanx by choosing ground for battle in which such a formation would break itself in its advance. The invention and perfecting of the Torian Squares and the consequent attempts to refine and improve the phalanx, failures, were developments which had preceded the use of tharlarion and tarn cavalries, which radically changed the face of Gorean warfare. - (Assassin of Gor)