Sent 200 Merc Rabble - who typically do surprisingly well in melee - against 34 Peasants. This tiny number of defenders killed over 100 of my unit before they finally broke (and only then because their captain got killed). They chewed through my statistically stronger unit! As far as I know they weren't gold chevron or anything like that.

There's some balance element wrong here, right? This isn't the first time I've noticed the power of peasants in this mod and the AI sometimes builds quite a lot of them.