Irregular unit choices

Did anyone notice more weird recruiting issues other than the english that cant recruit sergeants in the campaign?
I also noticed that Venice can build crossbow militia that are horrifyingly better than anything else they can recruit in early age and the castle units are weaker than their militia units. After checking in custom battles the crossbow militia is a High era unit but you can recruit it from the start. So basically a castle can build peasant archers and sergeant spearmen while a city can build italian spear militia and militia crossbowmen which are superior to their castle counter parts. Is this intented?

Italy was famous for its high quality city militia, so perhaps the superiority over castle troops was intended? I have not played Venice, but castles are still useful for swords and knights, right?

AFAIK, England did not use "spearmen" in the HYW (except some Welsh spearmen on occasion) - it did use billmen and dismounted knights, so not giving them good spears is historically defensible. What I don't like is depriving their polearm units of the anti-cav properties they had in MTW. And there really should be dismounted knights with spears (lances).

Ah i see, yes i knew that there was some strong militia history but i was surprised to see such good troops from the start(crossbows).
Shouldnt they get some militia archers before crossbows?
Anyway you are right since castles are still needed for cavalry and i guess some late units.