While not realistic it serves a balance purpose in limiting the amount of damage to a region that is possible in one turn. Maybe it needs to be tweaked in how quickly it appears, but I doubt it, sometime it occurs very early in looting, most the time it doesn't. It would be nice if the amount of peasants was relative to the army, but then in rural regions facing large armies, the region would soon be depopulated when large amounts of peasants are killed at the end of every turn, kind of ruining the whole balance aspect the code is supposed to provide.
Mind you I can't explain instant messages within the "in game reality" fortunately it is a game, so things like this can be implemented for game play reasons.
I have noticed that when first an army starts looting a region the first turn peasants don't come up for a long time, but all sequential turns the peasants come up a lot quicker. Though it is a balance issue to me it is the most annoying one. You could have the damage done by looting reduced somewhat as it seems even with the peasants stopping the looting concentrated effort can wreck non cities stats fast. Then it just become waiting around slaughtering peasants which makes no sense they would get themselves killed like that. It might be better if when peasants rise up it is something like all the peasants rise to defend their lands which only lasts till the end of the turn, and their is no battle. That way you only kill a regions population if you starve them out, or choose to rape and kill.
