Yes, I've followed that thread too, but you guys focused on individual stats and mechanics (which are still a bit alien to me, TBH), when I really believe weird formation behavior is the key here.

If spear units could consistenly use that second rank like they do right after a charge, and like pikemen do, their lowly individual stats would matter less, wouldn't they ?

spearmen are much tighter in schiltron, aren't they ? Maybe in a schiltron the "inner men" will actually stab through.

Testing...

Hmmm, bit better. They actually held against peasants this time, thrice. Decimated though, 35 spears to 25-30 peasants left. And even though the second, inner circle does stab through in the beginning... the point of contact between schiltron and peasants, the circle's tangent if you like, again quickly degenerates into 1 vs 1 and the formation again does not hold properly :/

@Sinan : I'm not sure I've ever seen an official word from CA on this (not a .com reader myself... There was in the alleged hoax though), but it's generally believed/accepted round here that in order to counteract "blobbing" exploits (*), CA coded in a "buffer zone" around each soldier, with individual soldiers automatically spacing themselves out of each other's buffer zone. (I think I also read that if for some reason two soldiers were forced into sharing their buffer zones, their stats were greatly reduced).
When in melee, this spreading increases overtime because each individual soldier tries to stay out of his comrades" buffer zone + the enemy's buffer zone, pushing each other away all the time. I'm sure you've noticed that melees are much less "orderly" and more confuse than they were in RTW. That's why.

In castles and cities the problem is increased even more because the men also try to space themselves out from the streetwalls... In a cramped street, even unit fighting in close formation can disintegrate into soldiers 10m from each other because of this. There was a thread with a dramatic screenshot a couple of weeks ago, I'll try and find it again if you'd like.

And all of that breaks unit cohesion. And I really believe that while it's not a big problem for swordsmen, axemen etc... who are designed to duke it out one on one in the first place, it's what is really crippling spearmen, and what makes them as shoddy as they are right now : they just can't make their specific, formation-based strength work.

[* : if you don't know (I didn't ), blobbing means deploying 2+ units in the exact same spot, hence having 2+ times as many attacks in a zone 2+ times smaller, very unrealistic and cheesy, as you could beat spartan hoplites with town militia that way ]