I think some infoscreens while loading are outdated. For example the iberian fireship is only effective against ship, not against harbours, as ist was. But strongest Infantrie unit is true with the agape technology, which can be explored in the military cantine. Then they go to 250 health, with a penality in training time. Silver Shild only yield 220 health.
The spartanian hoplite with +10 health bonus is also pretty strong for citizen melee units. With rank they upgrade from 111 over 138 to 172. They also get stronger from 3,0/ 2,5 hack/pierce damage to 4,3/3,6. Their resistance increase from 5/5/15 to 7/7/15 (hack/pierce/crush). No forge upgrade. So they get really cavaly killers. With the hoplite tradition they are much more likely to reach a rank in gameplay compared to other melee.
Albeit the potolomies pikeman, when ever they get rank promoted with 157 health and the Ptolomy IV Champion bonus +40% health, they end up with 219 health having pretty good resistance, they become tough to fight in the champion aura.
What I do miss on the spartaniens is chamion cavalery, or a replacement. The Siritaki can gather, but like all promoted units their effectiveness goes down. Wood chopping rate of 0,37 for example is little more than half of woman wood chopping. So best they are used for building/repair.
When I started with 0.ad Version 0.24 spartans had two special buildings. The stoa and the royal stoa. When you look into the scenario "Laconia" you can still see them because player 1 is starting with each one of them. Albeit.... they are both called "stoa", and not much of use now (okey you can garnison any unit in the royal stoa, this is good when under attack, and they are pretty).
They were able to train Thracian Black Cloaks ( see Macedon), as soon as you get into phase two. I really liked that feature of the spartanians. The black Cloaks saved my ass serveral times when I was fighting computer AI on alpha 0.24.
Generally it seems to me units were more different those days. From my remembering their walking speed was like the naked fanatics of the gauls. Nowadays they are like all other chamion melee, except for fanatics.