They also seem to have some kind of defense malus, they have less defense than other units with equal armor.

It's especially egregious with the Fallen peasants, whose massive hp (13) turns into some 70 hp per head with shock trooper training and a levelup.

As cool in a geeky way as that is, I go with roman numerals for a slightly less immersion-breaking effect: Peasant III, Peasant IV, etc.

Yeah, imo, the Peasant unit should either be disabled or fixed. Also, what is with that default avatar image... it doesn't look right for most races and should probably just be generated as well.

Not to mention the balance issues that occur once you realize you can "upgrade" your peasants and keep their 8 extra HP per unit.

The funny thing is that you can upgrade them and give them better weapons and armor, but for some reason they have different armor choices than the rest of your army.

There's also the thing with the 0.8 dex they have, which basically reduces all armor you give them by 20%. You can abuse this by letting them stay at 0 armor and using their ungawdly HP to make up for it. If you give them the berserker ring, the defense penalty is also reduced by 20%. So if they have no other armor, the berserker ring will only give them -2 Def (-2.7 rounded up)

All in all, the peasant unit needs to be fixed so that it's not so abusable.