While I agree with you, I don't know if it would work so well in this game. Back in Empire Total War, (I didnt play Napolean) you had a bunch of militia based on pop. And that worked because combat was a physical thing and if you had the money you had fortifications. In a fight the A.I. would lose 99% of the time when autoresolved based on the sheer overwhelming power of the opposition, you could win because militia could hide. Cannons were rendered ineffective, Indian skirmishers- ineffective, cavalry- ineffective. Approaching line infantry trying to scale the walls could be shot by wall troops, wall cannons, and mortars while advancing, breaking their morale and sending them fleeing with half the compliment intact rendering a whoe unit ineffective. And when the enmy finally pushedt hrough the front gate an ambush was waiting for them while they poured in through the gap beforet hey could get into formation and fire. Not to mention garrisons.
So, that long post was to illsutrate than in a turn based game like this wherein ambushes, bunkering, and having to be in formation before an ttack, are out of the equation, its hard to imagine civvies winning against average-to large strength stacks. Considering they're just guys with sticks or something, any channelers would be able to take out groups of them with a few AoE spells unless spells get a nerf(which I think they should). Unlike Empire, the land is small so there's no place to run and the land isn't "physical" so you cant hide behind something something to avoid projectile weaponry. Without a castle or a keep there's nothing to stop the enmy from just walking up to you and killing you. Especially since there's no way to break morale and send them running away like in Empire
I think, to expand your idea, that the battle map needs to be 50-100% bigger and include the walls of a sttelement that units can garrison inside and attack people. The walls should have cannons or crossbows in them making all garrisoned troops ranged units.
(I just thought of something. I haven't gotten a chance to use the "lay siege" command in the game yet or et the greatest tier of walls. So if there are walls in tactical battles that do something similar to what I describe disregard this post and Ill delete it or something later.)