i liked when players could afford low-medium tier stuff instead of peasant only stuff
You easily can. I was spectating a battle the other day where one of the teams had at least some selection of mail shirts and I even saw military cleavers.
I think most people are sticking to peasant gear because of the "you spawn with it, you lose it" bug (which I have yet to hear any dev acknowledge even though it's basically holding up all of strategus).
Well -- another reason is because people are taking villages when I believe chadz' official statement was that you shouldn't be taking them yet, because he had not yet decided on a population level. So we are fighting villages with a pop of 500 when actually they maybe are supposed to be closer to 150. We're equipping 800 peasants instead of 200 medium/light troops. We're spending a whole lot of time recruiting troops that probably should have been spent on goods and caravans.
So basically it's still out of whack, even from chadz' intentions.