Big news about BI campaign regarding peasant garrisons!!!

[player1]

They are less effective then before 1.6 patch.
More precisely, -50% effective.
Just checked in my current Sassanid campaign I started playing.

For example, if two levies would give 20% of public order in some city, two peasant units would give just 10% public order instead, although both type of units are of same stack size.

This is new behavior after the patch.
I suspect that's what for "is_peasant" flag is used in units data files. To mark low public order capable units (all peasant units in this case).

I guess this could have some use in future modmaking too.
Not to mention that some of old strategies will becomes less effective.


P.S.
This is Barbarian Invasion campaign feature only.
Imperial campaign peasants behave normally (nor they have "is_peasant" flag).

[Pode]

Good news. Shame it wasn't in the patch readme where it belonged.

[Fabolous]

Hah, is_peasant might have developed a use. Excellent.

This will alter some peoples stratagies, though I probably will still play without peasants.

[Es Arkajae]

Of more use would have been the creation of a specific 'Militia' unit that was more effective at supressing unrest.

Peasants were already useless for anything other than garrisoning, now they're not even really good for that.

Frankly they should just get rid of all the peasant units and replace them with some type of 'militia' ones, as is they're a waste of unit slots.

[armchair caesar]

Of more use would have been the creation of a specific 'Militia' unit that was more effective at supressing unrest.

Peasants were already useless for anything other than garrisoning, now they're not even really good for that.

Frankly they should just get rid of all the peasant units and replace them with some type of 'militia' ones, as is they're a waste of unit slots.

If you playing another faction besides WRE-ERE, peasants can be usefull for sending them to their death against Roman legions - let them waste their pilum on them, then move your main force to attack. Not that this is new information, but it is fun to do in vanilla RTW/BI.