I noticed in the export_descr_unit.txt that the Skeleton compensation factor in melee which is what I used to refer to as the lethality factor {and that seems to describe how it modifys the results of an attack} is very high for Peasants .
In RTW that stat basically seemed to make the likelyhood of a successful attack more likely to result in a kill the higher it was with 1 being the highest . RTR and EB {and others , me too ;p} used it as a way to lower the kill rates and the slow the pace of melee {I also used minimum delay in combination} .

Now it seem to have changed a little with values over 1 being valid {before , it seemed to count any value greater than 1 as 1} , but if it works anything like it did before , then the 1.8 {strewth !} given to Peasants is surely a typo as that is a huge increase over 1 , let alone over the paltry 0.6 of all spear infantry I looked at !
To put it into perspective for those who haven't played around with that stat in RTW , it seemed to be a fairly straight forward progression where {to my observations , and I monked around with those sets of stat a lot} 1 gave twice the kill rate of 0.5 over a given period of time if all else {including skeleton etc} were equal .


I think the 1.8 of Peasants {whom are using the same animation as spearmen to look at them} is a typo as it is giving them a kill rate on a successful hit of up to 3 times that of spear infantry ! Now , granted , the spearmen have more successful hits {higher attack} and get hit less often {higher defense} , but even if the Skeleton compensation factor in melee stat progression is in a curve etc , then the value difference is still way off .
1.8 is surely a mistake {again , same animation , same skeleton then one must assume , so why such a massive "compensation" when those pitchforks are really just badly designed spears ?