Questions about Hippkons

Hi everyone,

I was recently trying to use greek and it looks like their main cavalry unit, hippikon, is a bit weird. They take 3 pop, and it makes them lose pop-wise to literally any inf/cav unit in the game. In the early game their training speed is so low that I have to build 3-4 stables to produce large numbers of them. So my questions are:

-- Is it worth it to use hippikons in the early game to defend myself?

-- Should I use them to raid? (they die quickly to crenelllated towers and have no LoS)

-- Are they worth it in the late game?

-- Is it better to support them with hypaspist (and tech into infantry) or with toxote (and tech into archers)?

-- Are cavalry upgrades (Thracian Horses/Spirited Charge) worth it?

-- Should I generally make more stables/hippikons in Claassical or decrease cavalry production and go Heroic for faster training time/techs?

Thanks in advance for your responces.