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[Manveru Taurënér]

Just FYI, Toady is Tarn. Threetoe's name is Zach.

Derp, meant to write Toady and Threetoe (or Tarn and Zach), silly brain mixing things up

[Cathar]

     Oh, I never said they were unarmed, I said they had nothing to lose (by fighting). Let's set up a realistic scenario: A well-equipped but non-Elite goblin has three dwarves trapped in a (room that contains a) Farmer's Workshop--usually one of the more exposed parts of a fortress. The dwarves snatch up whatever weapons are closest to hand: One grabs the bronze shears and wooden bucket, another takes the milking stool (which of course is made of stone), and the third must be content with an empty leather bag. I think you'll agree that these are very tame "weapons", especially when compared with things like a Cook's knives, a Carpenter's saws, and a Mason's hammers & chisels. The goblin, meanwhile, has an iron scimitar and helmet, copper mail shirt, and wooden shield.

Oh, then I just misread you. The presence of weapons on the side of the civilians is indeed a game changer. Yes, even a stool, and you don't have to make it of stone for it to be effective as a weapon, using stools is what they tell you in self defense classes. If you receive a slash, you can use the stool to block the line of attack, and most importantly, you can create a buffer zone between you and your opponant. If the stool is grabbed you can just discard it and run away. A stool is a very effective weapon in life or death situations.

[GoblinCookie]

Could you perhaps list some of these other numerous disadvantages? Can't find you mentioning more than that it'll cost precious metal (which isn't really an argument for or against anything, just a fact), and that it'll boost the courage of armed civilians thus making them more likely to fight rather than run away, which again is just a matter of preference between wanting dwarves to be easily controlled vs having more personal agenda. Arguing that civilians fleeing is more optimal or whatnot is irrelevant really, everything being optimal makes for a very boring game and story.

The lineup is as follows.

- Arming civilians transfers resources from the military, it is inefficient to place tools in the hands of those who lack the skills to effectively use them. 

- Arming civilians makes them more threatening to intelligent invading forces, which would be more likely to ignore them otherwise.  The fact the civilians are unorganized means that killing them all is still not a major problem for the invaders in either case. 

-Arming civilians allows covert hostile elements to move undetected as such while carrying substantial armaments. 

- The more powerful the weapons that can be delivered to a surprise attack the more quickly the attackers can dispatch their initial victims and move onto to the next victim or back into the mist without being pinned down in a protracted fight.  Conversely the worse the weapons that the surprise attackers can bring to bear the less effective their initial strike, which means they are a greater risk of getting pinned down.

- Arming civilians makes law enforcement more expensive and dangerous.  Instead of being able to deal with criminal elements deploying only minimal force, they are forced to deploy excessive force in order to be able to deal with the high potential for armed resistance from said criminals. 

- Arming civilians increases their confidence, causing the braver among them to risk combat rather than running which given the general lack of organization among the civilians does little damage to the adversary and simply wastes lives.

-Arming civilians increases the damage done should an one of the civilians go mad and decide to go on a rampage.  It also reduces the ability of such an individual to be safely restrained and incarcerated as opposed to simply killed. 

+ Arming civilians somewhat increases their chances of survival should they find themselves ambushed by predators. 

     Is gradual clothing decay helpful? Is miasma helpful? Is the possibility of grazers over-eating their pasture helpful? Is it helpful to have four different types of amaranth? I say no. But are these features worth being in the game? I say yes.

This is not at all the same context.  All those things while unhelpful are realistic, but armed civilians are not a question of realism.  A society with armed civilians is no more realistic than a society with no armed civilians.  The only question is whether the society is infected with the delusion of armed civilians, a delusion that afflicts the devs own country rather badly as it were; if we want to add this in for the 'sake of realism' we then have to figure out what would make a society develop said delusion in the first place.  In effect we are in the business of the devs deciding if it would be unrealistic for society X to not develop the delusion of arming civilians. 

As I said it is rather like the general false beliefs problem that relates at the moment to mythology.  Societies realistically hold all manner of irrational, false and delusional beliefs which do them no good at all but how do we decide which of those beliefs any given society would realistically develop?

     AFAIK, the only other "stealthy murderers and assassins" in Fort Mode are ambush squads. And since even a fully armed & armored militiadwarf would be hard pressed to survive bumping into a whole ambush squad, the question of whether a civilian is carrying a knife or not is pretty much a moot point. And while vampires are indeed relevant to the discussion of civilian weapons, they were really dragging the thread off-topic for a while there: Page 2 contains 100 instances of the word "vampire"--"weapon" got only 35.

That is why we are talking about vampires.  Vampires are the only presently implemented example of what is a general problem in the real-world. 

     True, but you did specify the vampire using the axe for an instakill . . . so I guess we both have a valid nitpick here.

If the vampire puts his victim into a coma and then feeds it is pretty much the same as an insta-kill.  The key thing any surprise attacker wants to avoid is a protracted struggle that will result in them being pinned down.  It does not matter much whether the victim is incapacitated or dead to this end. 

     That is a good point, but I wasn't implying that giving civilians the choice of fighting bears was a good idea, merely a realistic one. Yes, bears, alligators, and other serious threats should be left entirely to the militia, and even the most violent and foolhardy dwarf should recognize that--unless they're cornered or surrounded, in which case the only remaining option is to grit your teeth and try to take at least one of them with you. As for less intimidating creatures, any able-bodied civilian with a half-decent weapon could most likely take a badger, egret, or owl with little difficulty--but they would definitely get injured if they tried to do so unarmed.
     Long story short, you can still run away if you've got a weapon. But you can't fight without one. And no self-respecting dwarf would deny himself the option.

I agree that arming civilians helps increase their survival chances should they find themselves surprised by some killer animal, but we don't want civilians thinking that they can fight in any case.  Thing is though that any percentage of dying is really too high in the long-run and there is still a percentage of dying.  The problem needs to be dealt with by actual squads with proper weapons and training, not by relying on reducing the chance of civilians dying from 80% to 50% by giving them daggers. 

     Actually, the game designers are almost certainly NOT doing it out of respect for some military observations that are so intuitive and obvious that their author has virtually sunk into obscurity. They are doing it for reasons of game balance: If the game can be reliably won simply by massing up workers and rushing your opponent before they have a chance to train soldiers, 90% of the game goes unseen and nobody really has any fun. But DF is bound by no such restrictions.

You could just mass low-level soldiers to the same effect, indeed a lot of games end with a rush of low-level soldiers overrunning everything before anyone ever gets to see the majority of the game content; it does not really matter if the low-level soldiers are also functionally builders in that scenario.  There are two situations here which relates very much to the discussion you are having about civilians with Cathar.  They are Lanchester's Square Law VS the Lanchester's Linear Law.

Taking two armies whose members have identical fighting capacities but one outnumbers the other, under the linear law the total survivors on the larger winning side is equal to the numerical difference between the larger force and the smaller one.  Under the square law the casualties of the larger winning force go down exponentially the bigger it's advantage is in numbers compared to the smaller force. 

The linear law applies whenever a battle is a set of 1-1 duels, the square law begins to apply whenever it is possible for multiple units to attack a single unit.  Reality is generally untidy enough that something between the two laws is the case but in a situation where we have a melee combat in a narrow passage the linear law starts to apply a lot more, by contrast in a battle between two forces with missile weapons in a flat open area the square law applies a lot more. 

Where the linear law applies then quality is more important, if your individual soldiers can reliably win a greater number of their individual duals your chances of winning go up even if you are outnumbered.  When you are dealing with a square law situation then quantity is more important, the more you can throw into the fight however rubbish it's individual capacities may be the better off you are.  This means that throwing civilian builder units into a fight works in the square law situation, since they increase the total numerical advantage and hence the costs of victory.

[Cathar]

The lineup is as follow [...]

+ If I am in a danger of death I want my hand on the blunt side of a weapon and I'll use any lever I have to pressure the local lord into disreguarding any of the above. The said lord may have an army but he needs workers to insure his own survival so the best case scenario will not be possible because we're no drones and we're concerned with our immediate survival

In general I believe you are only considering the two extremes of a spectrum. Either civilians have war weapons or they go buttnaked. You don't need a billhook to fend off a lone wolf, a weighted staff will do the trick. The only reason a civilian might need a billhook is to attack the local lords army, so the lord has a vested interest in forbidding the weapons meant to defeat armored foes. Maybe we can just add some gradation to the weaponry, and add civilians weapons?

As I said it is rather like the general false beliefs problem that relates at the moment to mythology.  Societies realistically hold all manner of irrational, false and delusional beliefs which do them no good at all but how do we decide which of those beliefs any given society would realistically develop?

Adaptating a culture to a new environment (like war) takes time. There is a buffer time between the old culture and its adaptation and this buffer zone is usually filled with a return to prime instinct of self preservation. In the long run, societies do adapt to the best fit model for their environment as a matter of course, but you have to take social inertia into account.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Could you perhaps list some of these other numerous disadvantages? Can't find you mentioning more than that it'll cost precious metal (which isn't really an argument for or against anything, just a fact), and that it'll boost the courage of armed civilians thus making them more likely to fight rather than run away, which again is just a matter of preference between wanting dwarves to be easily controlled vs having more personal agenda. Arguing that civilians fleeing is more optimal or whatnot is irrelevant really, everything being optimal makes for a very boring game and story.

The lineup is as follows.

- Arming civilians transfers resources from the military, it is inefficient to place tools in the hands of those who lack the skills to effectively use them. 

- Arming civilians makes them more threatening to intelligent invading forces, which would be more likely to ignore them otherwise.  The fact the civilians are unorganized means that killing them all is still not a major problem for the invaders in either case. 

-Arming civilians allows covert hostile elements to move undetected as such while carrying substantial armaments. 

- The more powerful the weapons that can be delivered to a surprise attack the more quickly the attackers can dispatch their initial victims and move onto to the next victim or back into the mist without being pinned down in a protracted fight.  Conversely the worse the weapons that the surprise attackers can bring to bear the less effective their initial strike, which means they are a greater risk of getting pinned down.

- Arming civilians makes law enforcement more expensive and dangerous.  Instead of being able to deal with criminal elements deploying only minimal force, they are forced to deploy excessive force in order to be able to deal with the high potential for armed resistance from said criminals. 

- Arming civilians increases their confidence, causing the braver among them to risk combat rather than running which given the general lack of organization among the civilians does little damage to the adversary and simply wastes lives.

-Arming civilians increases the damage done should an one of the civilians go mad and decide to go on a rampage.  It also reduces the ability of such an individual to be safely restrained and incarcerated as opposed to simply killed. 

+ Arming civilians somewhat increases their chances of survival should they find themselves ambushed by predators. 

None of those are really arguments as to why it would be bad to add an allow weapons for civilians option to the game though, rather the opposite in my opinion. No risk means no fun! It does make a case for baking it into the law and order update though as one of many choices one would have to decide for ones fortress. You'd have the option of banning weapons entirely for anyone but the guards/militia, but face disgruntled dwarves and some even outright refusing to go outside for fishing etc depending on how dangerous the area and how obstinate the dwarf (you can bet no one sane would go outside without either a weapon or an escort in a terrifying biome), and possibly traders and other visitors like monster hunters refusing to enter your fortress without their arms. Or you could limit it to certain areas of the fort (kind of Aragon and co entering Meduseld in Rohan esque), or only limit non-citizens, or let everyone arm themselves if they want and deal with those possible consequences instead (which would also include annoying those abhorring weapons and violence, but you can never please everyone ^^).

[Sarmatian123]

At first I must admit I am great supporter of militia, so lets get down to discussion.

- Arming civilians transfers resources from the military, it is inefficient to place tools in the hands of those who lack the skills to effectively use them.

In modern times, when arming civilians you are giving them also basic combat training. It creates high reserve manpower for army.

- Arming civilians makes them more threatening to intelligent invading forces, which would be more likely to ignore them otherwise.  The fact the civilians are unorganized means that killing them all is still not a major problem for the invaders in either case.

Killing them, no, but finding them and only then killing them, this changes. Militia increases drastically cost for attacking force. Attacker has to deploy force from 20:1 to up to 47:1 to effectively occupy militia defended territory. To opposite for regular operational army to defeat other regular operation army, attacker has to deploy force of strength 3:1.

Example: To occupy land defended by 1 militia division, attacker needs 20-47 army divisions.

Example: To win battle in which defender yields 1 army divisions, attacker needs mere 3 own army divisions.

Conclusions about arming and training civilians as weekend warriors, giving them basic combat skills in school and forming militias? Switzerland does something right, doesn't it?

-Arming civilians allows covert hostile elements to move undetected as such while carrying substantial armaments. 

However arming civilians makes execution of operation by covert hostile extremely dangerous and prone to fail even when excessive firepower was planned. Militia creation also rises local detection and awareness of covert operations. Also due militia presence, there is an immediate response to covert operations with firepower exceeding that of a regular police task force.

- The more powerful the weapons that can be delivered to a surprise attack the more quickly the attackers can dispatch their initial victims and move onto to the next victim or back into the mist without being pinned down in a protracted fight.  Conversely the worse the weapons that the surprise attackers can bring to bear the less effective their initial strike, which means they are a greater risk of getting pinned down.

Pinned down situation with militia local presence is ensured for any attacker no matter how big firepower was brought in. Local defenders have always terrain as their surprise advantage.

- Arming civilians makes law enforcement more expensive and dangerous.  Instead of being able to deal with criminal elements deploying only minimal force, they are forced to deploy excessive force in order to be able to deal with the high potential for armed resistance from said criminals. 

Arming civilians, while giving them basic combat education and forming militia, ensures law enforcement is less expensive, less manpower hungry, though still dangerous as always. This is because police is payed service, which by itself can't enforce law everywhere, while militia is payed by benefits rather then wages and it is all-present in their location. Basically you can't have cops on every roads corner, while with militia you always get in there and every window, door and buss stop "concerned", "trained" and "equipped" citizens. Crime in locations protected by police + militia is almost non-existent or related only to criminal travelers passing by.

- Arming civilians increases their confidence, causing the braver among them to risk combat rather than running which given the general lack of organization among the civilians does little damage to the adversary and simply wastes lives.

Not providing civilians with basic means to protect themselves, effectively deprives them tools of trade to defend from criminal elements. It just feeds uncontrolled growth of criminality.

Furthermore civilians can be effortlessly be hoarded like cattle to Death Camps and slaughtered at attacker's whim, which happened in Europe, which is site of Humanitarianism ideology. This Humanitarianism is not popular, widely known or practiced neither in whole Asia, Africa and even in some parts of Latin America. So Holocaust do always expect as a rule of thumb on Earth, as Europe with its Humanitarianism is the smallest in landmass continent.

-Arming civilians increases the damage done should an one of the civilians go mad and decide to go on a rampage.  It also reduces the ability of such an individual to be safely restrained and incarcerated as opposed to simply killed.

Arming civilians stops any civilian going mad on rampage dead in their track, almost instantly. Basically anyone can rise the barrel of gun to head of enraged person to calm him/her down, call police and have him/her safely apprehended without any spill of human life. There are other factors rising risk of civilians killing civilians. Like religious, political, ethnic or economic conflicts, which can turn a group of civilians to rebel against the unjust society with their guns and training and fight for justice and freedom for themselves. Reason why totalitarian regimes always set as their priority to disarm civilians, even at significant expense of catastrophically growing criminality. Dictatorship just tries to protect itself, else it is drop dead in one stop.

+ Arming civilians somewhat increases their chances of survival should they find themselves ambushed by predators. 

Not really. Ambush is ambush. No matter if you send into one, a squad of militia or a squad of Navy Seals... Someone will die. Unless they bring with them protection. Like bullet proof vests? I highy doubt those work any better just because you put one on special forces operator instead of militiaman. Same size. Cover same places on body. Same cover. See?

[Splint]

Strictly speaking the Militia isn't the Fortress Guard, but if a problem serious enough to warrant lethal force arises, then it becomes a moot point. Also probably a good idea to keep any active duty guys away from tantrumers, as they tend to respond poorly to being assaulted or seeing a citizen being assaulted. The Fortress Guard enforces the law, the Militia keeps the fortress and surrounding countryside safe from serious threats.

The Guard just happens to be able to act in a military capacity if the need arises.

Additionally, as far as threat levels to invaders - The argument only holds water with elves, humans, and other dwarves and similar civs that don't have the [KILL_NEUTRAL:REQUIRED] or presumably [KILL_NEUTRAL:ACCEPTABLE/PERSONAL_MATTER] ethics. Our usual enemies - goblins, the undead, and various other horrors - don't care if you have a chainsword or a sandwich knife, they'll kill you for the crime of existing in thier line of sight for any length of time. Your only options are to fight or flee and hope you can lock the doors before they get through them. Similarly in the latter case, societies which don't give a damn may depend wholly on the individual invaders - some might ignore the unarmed civilians, others might decide to go a hunting for shits and giggles or to remove a "resource" that could allow us to rebuild with.

I'd also like to say resource allocation is a poor argument, as that's entirely up to us as the player (or the fortress leadership if you wanna get nit picky,) to decide if we want to expend materials on that. Plus we could also use wood, bone, and stone to make staves, shivs, and cudgels and reserve the metal for the military; it achieves the same effect of giving the civilians something they can fight with besides thier bare hands if they need or choose to.

Militarized populace - Cramming everyone in squads is an option, and a valid one, but kinda counter to the thread. The idea is civilians are defending themselves from minor threats not entirely worth the militia's time to deal with or deciding to be stupid in some manner (forming armed mobs to fight invaders without the player's express order to do so, attacking eachother during arguments, using these weapons and tools for criminal activity (giving the Fortress Guard more to actually do,) vigilantism against bloodsuckers, and so on,) not being part-time soldiers.

A weaver shouldn't need to be in the militia to have a crundle whacking stick, nor a tavern keeper should be in the militia if he just wants a hatchet to dissuade troublemakers, or an herbalist be a militia captain just to have a pitchfork to fend off badgers or coyotes.

[catoblepas]

I really don't think we need to bring in gun control and the holocaust into this discussion.

-Dwarves already pick up crafts etc and claim/wear them.store them in their room, so precious metal already gets diverted away from industry (and the military, when they claim related objects).

In regard to the supposed material drain this would cause:
  - We are only talking about weapons anyways, not armor-so the metal drain would be minimal
  -A lot of the relevent weapons here would be made out of wood anyways: Cudgels, Staves, mallets etc.
  -Woodcutters and miners already require metal tools, and it has never been much of a drain.
  -It's not going to be a drain on your resources if you choose not to make any daggers, cudgels etc. I don't think anyone here interested in this
   feature's inclusion are requesting it as anything other than a option.
  -As I suggested earlier, some of these items are small enough that the possibility that they could be made in batches instead of just 1 per
  bar should be considered.

In regard to possible unbalancing issues:
  -We already have armed civilians in the form of woodcutters and miners, and an entire fort of woodcutters and miners does not unbalance the
  game
  -We already have the ability to assign dwarves to squads if you want to arm and armor your civilians, this would be both less drastic and less
   micromanagement
  -Dwarves armed with daggers and wood cudgels are not going to be significantly overpowering, being weaker options compared to proper
  weapons like swords and spears.

I think it would be great from an immersion perspective. Historically these weapons and tools did exist, and often did get used in self defense, so it would make sense for them to be implemented as such. Plus, we already have some of these items (the knives) come in caravans and appear in Adventure mode carried by npcs. giving them more of a use in Fortress mode would be, in my mind, a welcome thing. Dwarves beating off the occasional animal or pulling out knives in a tavern brawl seem like they could be rather interesting as well.

[GoblinCookie]

None of those are really arguments as to why it would be bad to add an allow weapons for civilians option to the game though, rather the opposite in my opinion. No risk means no fun! It does make a case for baking it into the law and order update though as one of many choices one would have to decide for ones fortress. You'd have the option of banning weapons entirely for anyone but the guards/militia, but face disgruntled dwarves and some even outright refusing to go outside for fishing etc depending on how dangerous the area and how obstinate the dwarf (you can bet no one sane would go outside without either a weapon or an escort in a terrifying biome), and possibly traders and other visitors like monster hunters refusing to enter your fortress without their arms. Or you could limit it to certain areas of the fort (kind of Aragon and co entering Meduseld in Rohan esque), or only limit non-citizens, or let everyone arm themselves if they want and deal with those possible consequences instead (which would also include annoying those abhorring weapons and violence, but you can never please everyone ^^).

Fun is not really an argument.  Forcing or semi-forcing (pissed off dwarves) players to act in a fashion that is irrational and self-destructive is not everyone's idea of fun, it might be yours but as I said no argument.

At first I must admit I am great supporter of militia, so lets get down to discussion.

In modern times, when arming civilians you are giving them also basic combat training. It creates high reserve manpower for army.

We are not talking about militia, which we already have.  We are here talking about individuals not organized or formerly trained being armed. 

Killing them, no, but finding them and only then killing them, this changes. Militia increases drastically cost for attacking force. Attacker has to deploy force from 20:1 to up to 47:1 to effectively occupy militia defended territory. To opposite for regular operational army to defeat other regular operation army, attacker has to deploy force of strength 3:1.

Example: To occupy land defended by 1 militia division, attacker needs 20-47 army divisions.

Example: To win battle in which defender yields 1 army divisions, attacker needs mere 3 own army divisions.

Conclusions about arming and training civilians as weekend warriors, giving them basic combat skills in school and forming militias? Switzerland does something right, doesn't it?

Occupation is rather beside the point since occupation is post game-over.  The point I was getting at is that razing everything to the ground or enslaving everyone becomes more 'practical' the more armed the civilians are expected to be.  If the civilians are a threat, I respond by killing all the civilians while they are disorganized because if I leave them alone they can organize and actually potentially defeat my garrison.

However arming civilians makes execution of operation by covert hostile extremely dangerous and prone to fail even when excessive firepower was planned. Militia creation also rises local detection and awareness of covert operations. Also due militia presence, there is an immediate response to covert operations with firepower exceeding that of a regular police task force.

The covert elements can move undetected, allowing them to establish an overwhelming local superiority at any place of their choosing.  Then reinforcements can pour in from the main force and take strategic ground. 

Pinned down situation with militia local presence is ensured for any attacker no matter how big firepower was brought in. Local defenders have always terrain as their surprise advantage.

Not when the attackers can mover undetected by disguising themselves *as* civilians. 

Not providing civilians with basic means to protect themselves, effectively deprives them tools of trade to defend from criminal elements. It just feeds uncontrolled growth of criminality.

Furthermore civilians can be effortlessly be hoarded like cattle to Death Camps and slaughtered at attacker's whim, which happened in Europe, which is site of Humanitarianism ideology. This Humanitarianism is not popular, widely known or practiced neither in whole Asia, Africa and even in some parts of Latin America. So Holocaust do always expect as a rule of thumb on Earth, as Europe with its Humanitarianism is the smallest in landmass continent.

The civilians *are* the criminal elements; if we give civilians weapons we also give the criminals weapons, since they are the same thing.  Criminals are not something that comes from mars and conjures it's weapons out of thin air on the basis of the criminalness to terrorize a civilian population cruelly made weaponless by evil tyrants.  While they may ignore the gun laws, they still have a harder time acquiring weapons if the general population is unarmed and the presence of illegal weapons acts as evidence for their criminality so it still works against them. 

As already discussed, the ability of the civilian population to potentially organize to resist their occupiers is a direct incentive for said occupiers to imprison or kill the civilian population.  Concentration camps were not invented by the Nazis in Europe, they were invented by the British in South Africa in order to solve a problem that the local Boer populations did not appreciate being 'made part' of the British Empire.  Because the civilian population was armed it was possible for the Boers to threaten the British government even despite their governments and armies being annihilated.  The solution was to incarcerate the whole population in concentration camps and the Boers could not resist this despite being armed. 

Where there is a will there is a way.  The more dangerous you make the civilian population to the occupiers, the more extreme is their response; recall the crucial element of organization means that even if armed the civilians will still not be able to actually resist the response.  Once you have incarcerated or killed the entire civilian population, then you can disarm them and the problem goes away as it were.  If I leave everyone alone however, then they can hide their weapons in their homes and then suddenly rise up in an organized way to attack you. 

Arming civilians stops any civilian going mad on rampage dead in their track, almost instantly. Basically anyone can rise the barrel of gun to head of enraged person to calm him/her down, call police and have him/her safely apprehended without any spill of human life. There are other factors rising risk of civilians killing civilians. Like religious, political, ethnic or economic conflicts, which can turn a group of civilians to rebel against the unjust society with their guns and training and fight for justice and freedom for themselves. Reason why totalitarian regimes always set as their priority to disarm civilians, even at significant expense of catastrophically growing criminality. Dictatorship just tries to protect itself, else it is drop dead in one stop.

There is no such thing as a totalitarian regime, the whole phrase was something made up by some Cold War propagandist, I think and means nothing that is not incorporated by other older perjorative terms like 'tyranny', which are also invalid in my view.  You cannot calm down an enraged person with a gun when the enraged person has a gun themselves.  If nobody is armed then you can physically restrain the unarmed person, but nobody can physically restrain an armed person; they must be fought by another armed person and the outcome must result in bloodshed. 

Not really. Ambush is ambush. No matter if you send into one, a squad of militia or a squad of Navy Seals... Someone will die. Unless they bring with them protection. Like bullet proof vests? I highly doubt those work any better just because you put one on special forces operator instead of militiaman. Same size. Cover same places on body. Same cover. See?

That is basically why arming civilians does not protect them very well against predators. 

I really don't think we need to bring in gun control and the holocaust into this discussion.

That is basically what it is about.  It just so happens that every one of my points which applies in a fully-developed Dwarf Fortress also applies in real-life.   

[Bumber]

You really cannot prevent civilians from being armed with knives, axes, etc., because they need them to do their work. Therefore, because some civilians are armed, they must all be allowed to be armed. It's like attempting to restrict the use of motor vehicles.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Fun is not really an argument.  Forcing or semi-forcing (pissed off dwarves) players to act in a fashion that is irrational and self-destructive is not everyone's idea of fun, it might be yours but as I said no argument.

Maybe not if one argues solely by saying x is fun and not explaining how or why, but in essence all suggestions for the game boils down to what one would find fun/not fun and elaborating on why, whether one finds more realism makes the game more fun, or more challenges, or more things to manage or build or just watch happen, or one finds those things makes the game less fun. Trying to dismiss stuff as irrational or self-destructive however is much less of a proper argument to be honest.

[Sarmatian123]

We are not talking about militia, which we already have.  We are here talking about individuals not organized or formerly trained being armed.

I see. Like a rushed militia. This is bad formation. Poor discipline, even if organised. They basically run like civilians around, while getting slaughtered. Even American civilians' mob, has more experience in shooting and gun maintenance, even if they miss basic military training.

However basic militia is civilians with guns + training. In past it used to be just peasants with forks and not much training at all.

Militia is not officially military and militia is not being taken under consideration as part of military forces. Militia and Army Reserve in USA form National Guard and militia can not serve outside their state. Florida used to have militia coast guard fleet, while Texas has militia combat air wing (F16 I think).

The covert elements can move undetected, allowing them to establish an overwhelming local superiority at any place of their choosing.  Then reinforcements can pour in from the main force and take strategic ground.

Covert element have harder time to move undetected, because:
1. Militia has more manpower and better equipment then Police to detect and respond to accidents.
2. Militia has intelligence gathering training and issued sat-phones to pass that intel up in the chain of command really fast.
3. Aliens do stick out of the crowd of familiar locals, who will be watching them anyhow. Even out of curiosity.
4. Part of militia training, as territorial defense force, is protection of vital local infrastructure.
5. Reinforcements can pour, if they are regular army and organized in attacking spear, but even then Militia will provide mines and other "surprises", slowing the reinforcement's assault.
6. If reinforcements are irregulars, like commandos, paratroopers or mechanized infantry without significant artillery support, then they can be ambushed, surrounded and kept under guard by militia force until army units will find time to take care about the issue, or even SWAT teams from police.

Not when the attackers can mover undetected by disguising themselves *as* civilians.

However not as LOCAL civilians, because militia will be locals and locals always keep eye on moving through civilians, who are not local. Human nature. Plus on behalf of militia also some training for spotting, tracing, marking, signaling. The exceptions could be, if there are some international events, then there could be huge inflow of non-local civilians. However militia receives training in guarding strategical infrastructure and if someone is to spot covert operators causing trouble, then militia with their training and equipment.

Where there is a will there is a way.  The more dangerous you make the civilian population to the occupiers, the more extreme is their response; recall the crucial element of organization means that even if armed the civilians will still not be able to actually resist the response.  Once you have incarcerated or killed the entire civilian population, then you can disarm them and the problem goes away as it were.  If I leave everyone alone however, then they can hide their weapons in their homes and then suddenly rise up in an organized way to attack you. 

Yup. Who needs nuclear weapons, with such deterrent? If enemy knows that for every house, every road, ever tree they gonna pay with blood and dead soldiers then they think twice before attacking. After all equipment and training of elite soldier costs a lot. Furthermore nuclear bombs costs fortune and to clean a path through such armed to teeth civilians territory, it becomes cost prohibitive. Not to mention dangers from nuclear fallout. I think it is called a Pyrrhic victory. I think USA got something like that in Somalia a while ago. Mines bite.

There is no such thing as a totalitarian regime, the whole phrase was something made up by some Cold War propagandist, I think and means nothing that is not incorporated by other older perjorative terms like 'tyranny', which are also invalid in my view.  You cannot calm down an enraged person with a gun when the enraged person has a gun themselves.  If nobody is armed then you can physically restrain the unarmed person, but nobody can physically restrain an armed person; they must be fought by another armed person and the outcome must result in bloodshed. 

Definition of totalitarianism is in Wikipedia.

In basic. The thing is that if bad gets really bad and shootout starts, then whomever caused it, is stopped dead in track asap.

In advanced. Furthermore there is no need for rage with organized criminals, who can import/export drugs, but wouldn't few guns? Any businessmen is their legit target then for "protection" scam. You get faulty capitalism. When they use those on politicians and administration workers, you get corruption and your parliament is calling hearing after hearing, where other politicians have to leave their testimonies. This is how democracy rots and falls apart. Then you get patriots trying to rescue everything from falling apart from what it used to be and you get a dictatorship. Hopefully benevolent, but still a regime. Often military. More often right wing, then left wing due corruption reasons. It always goes to hell. Though countries like South Korea got lucky, got back to democracy and functional capitalism again. However South Korean secret anti-communist police was inhumane and absolutely deprived of any slightest sign of Humanitarianism.

That is basically what it is about.  It just so happens that every one of my points which applies in a fully-developed Dwarf Fortress also applies in real-life.   

However DF will have magic, so developers can get around Real Life issues. A MAGIC! ETA 1 year. Cover and duck!

[GoblinCookie]

You really cannot prevent civilians from being armed with knives, axes, etc., because they need them to do their work. Therefore, because some civilians are armed, they must all be allowed to be armed. It's like attempting to restrict the use of motor vehicles.

We do restrict the use of motor vehicles, so the analogy fails.  Just because miners are allowed to have picks to mine with, does not mean that any civilian dwarf need be allowed to take a pick from the stockpiles so that he can 'bash his neighbors brains out' should they annoy him.  Not least because doing so deprives actual miners of being able to get picks themselves to do their work, same situation as with militia dwarves.  Civilians arming themselves is something that has a cost, but next to no benefits and the more realistic the game gets the more the costs go up, with the benefits going down. 

Maybe not if one argues solely by saying x is fun and not explaining how or why, but in essence all suggestions for the game boils down to what one would find fun/not fun and elaborating on why, whether one finds more realism makes the game more fun, or more challenges, or more things to manage or build or just watch happen, or one finds those things makes the game less fun. Trying to dismiss stuff as irrational or self-destructive however is much less of a proper argument to be honest.

It is an argument when the thing actually is irrational and self-destructive with you being able to make a clear list as to why this.  Fun does not work as an argument because all I have to do is declare that arming civilians is *not* fun and we have an unbridgeable impasse.  Bloodlust seems to be a key driver behind some players idea of fun, adding more weapons means more bloodshed but is it not the law of diminishing returns to throw weapons into the situation when we already have plenty of violence potential with the present crop of miners, hunters, woodcutters and militia dwarves, plus we have the upcoming mages inherant potential for destruction?  I do not consider violence to be very fun if I do not have any real power over the situation and I am the victim of it, for the outbreak of lethal violence is random. 

This is the second more controversial element, is it even ethical for the devs to pander to the bloodthirsty players idea of fun at the expense of other players ideas of fun in the first place?

I see. Like a rushed militia. This is bad formation. Poor discipline, even if organised. They basically run like civilians around, while getting slaughtered. Even American civilians' mob, has more experience in shooting and gun maintenance, even if they miss basic military training.

However basic militia is civilians with guns + training. In past it used to be just peasants with forks and not much training at all.

Militia is not officially military and militia is not being taken under consideration as part of military forces. Militia and Army Reserve in USA form National Guard and militia can not serve outside their state. Florida used to have militia coast guard fleet, while Texas has militia combat air wing (F16 I think).

No, we are talking about armed individuals with no organization.  We already have civilian militias in the game already.  Organization is the key thing, weapons are when you think about a function of organization.  Production, smuggling, purchase and so on, all that is organization. 

A certain historical note, for most of history states did not maintain large standing armies in peacetime, nor did they maintain police forces in the sense we understand it now.  Militias in addition to forming the bulk of the army in wartime *were* the police force, if there was a crime a local notable with the authority would round up a militia to detain the suspected criminal elements, then the militiafolk would go back to their ordinary lives.  For any Americans that may be reading this, this is what their 2nd Amendment is on about when it talks about 'well-regulated militias'. 

This context is different to modern times.  In modern times we have a police force, so we do not have or need militias of the traditional kind any more as police forces have completely replaced their function for better or worse.  In ancient times folks were socially stratified by their role in the militia, the richest people could provide horses so fought in the elite cavalry militia, middle-class people could afford proper armor and shields so they fought as heavy infantry (think roman legionaries or greek phalanx), while the poorer people would run about and throw stuff like javelins or slingshot. 

Covert element have harder time to move undetected, because:
1. Militia has more manpower and better equipment then Police to detect and respond to accidents.
2. Militia has intelligence gathering training and issued sat-phones to pass that intel up in the chain of command really fast.
3. Aliens do stick out of the crowd of familiar locals, who will be watching them anyhow. Even out of curiosity.
4. Part of militia training, as territorial defense force, is protection of vital local infrastructure.
5. Reinforcements can pour, if they are regular army and organized in attacking spear, but even then Militia will provide mines and other "surprises", slowing the reinforcement's assault.
6. If reinforcements are irregulars, like commandos, paratroopers or mechanized infantry without significant artillery support, then they can be ambushed, surrounded and kept under guard by militia force until army units will find time to take care about the issue, or even SWAT teams from police.

The covert elements appear to everyone to be militia, since they appear as civilians with weapons.  The militia cannot defend itself against what looks exactly like itself. 

However not as LOCAL civilians, because militia will be locals and locals always keep eye on moving through civilians, who are not local. Human nature. Plus on behalf of militia also some training for spotting, tracing, marking, signaling. The exceptions could be, if there are some international events, then there could be huge inflow of non-local civilians. However militia receives training in guarding strategical infrastructure and if someone is to spot covert operators causing trouble, then militia with their training and equipment.

Do you know everyone that lives in your neighborhood?  Low-level commanders however do no the location of all their squads, which means they are not easily fooled by somebody who just turns up wearing their uniform.  With an armed civilian population the whole army can move undetected through the population in general, only assembling when it is time for them to reveal their true identity and purpose. 

Yup. Who needs nuclear weapons, with such deterrent? If enemy knows that for every house, every road, ever tree they gonna pay with blood and dead soldiers then they think twice before attacking. After all equipment and training of elite soldier costs a lot. Furthermore nuclear bombs costs fortune and to clean a path through such armed to teeth civilians territory, it becomes cost prohibitive. Not to mention dangers from nuclear fallout. I think it is called a Pyrrhic victory. I think USA got something like that in Somalia a while ago. Mines bite.

Terror makes things a lot cheaper, kill enough of the unorganised civilians to terrorise them into submission and then the fact that some of them managed to hide their weapons matters not.  The cost here is basically an ethical one, not a material one.  For most of history the world is full of despotic governments, but the world's civilians for most of history were far more armed than the present civilians are.  Nowadays we have many more democratic governments with far wider franchises than we ever did in the 'olden days', but the civilian population in most countries is far worse armed; how does that fit with the whole guns stop dictatorship idea?

The crucial thing here is organization.  If the population is armed they are still unable to challenge the government using those weapons unless they are organized.  The government solution is to crush all organization that is not completely subservient to the government since any opposition organization could quickly turn into an armed uprising essentially instantly.  The government solution to an armed citizenry is to allow no independent organization as any independent organization could overthrow them with no prior warning since it's members are already armed. 

Definition of totalitarianism is in Wikipedia.

In basic. The thing is that if bad gets really bad and shootout starts, then whomever caused it, is stopped dead in track asap.

In advanced. Furthermore there is no need for rage with organized criminals, who can import/export drugs, but wouldn't few guns? Any businessmen is their legit target then for "protection" scam. You get faulty capitalism. When they use those on politicians and administration workers, you get corruption and your parliament is calling hearing after hearing, where other politicians have to leave their testimonies. This is how democracy rots and falls apart. Then you get patriots trying to rescue everything from falling apart from what it used to be and you get a dictatorship. Hopefully benevolent, but still a regime. Often military. More often right wing, then left wing due corruption reasons. It always goes to hell. Though countries like South Korea got lucky, got back to democracy and functional capitalism again. However South Korean secret anti-communist police was inhumane and absolutely deprived of any slightest sign of Humanitarianism.

Lots of things that are in wikipedia do not exist.  A similar nonsense term to Totalitarian is Populist (similar in that it serves the same false analogy purpose of connecting Left and Right), but all acclaimed Populists turn out to just be your regular Fascists and Socialists.

The rest of your post mostly reads like incoherent conspiracy theorist style rambling.  I never denied that the criminals could acquire some guns if they wanted to, it is just their ability to acquire a lot of guns is much curtailed by the relative absence of free-floating guns in the society in general.  The number of guns is important, because provided they only have a few guns then law enforcement can easily deal with them, problem is when we end up with criminal 'armies' like they have in Mexico. 

Also you did not ask why they even want the guns in the first place?  In an armed society they basically need guns to protect themselves against their victims, they are also motivated to act in a more organized military-like fashion for the same reason. 

However DF will have magic, so developers can get around Real Life issues. A MAGIC! ETA 1 year. Cover and duck!

Magic is kind of like a person having an assault rifle that cannot be disarmed. 

[Manveru Taurënér]

You really cannot prevent civilians from being armed with knives, axes, etc., because they need them to do their work. Therefore, because some civilians are armed, they must all be allowed to be armed. It's like attempting to restrict the use of motor vehicles.

We do restrict the use of motor vehicles, so the analogy fails.  Just because miners are allowed to have picks to mine with, does not mean that any civilian dwarf need be allowed to take a pick from the stockpiles so that he can 'bash his neighbors brains out' should they annoy him.  Not least because doing so deprives actual miners of being able to get picks themselves to do their work, same situation as with militia dwarves.  Civilians arming themselves is something that has a cost, but next to no benefits and the more realistic the game gets the more the costs go up, with the benefits going down. 

Maybe not if one argues solely by saying x is fun and not explaining how or why, but in essence all suggestions for the game boils down to what one would find fun/not fun and elaborating on why, whether one finds more realism makes the game more fun, or more challenges, or more things to manage or build or just watch happen, or one finds those things makes the game less fun. Trying to dismiss stuff as irrational or self-destructive however is much less of a proper argument to be honest.

It is an argument when the thing actually is irrational and self-destructive with you being able to make a clear list as to why this.  Fun does not work as an argument because all I have to do is declare that arming civilians is *not* fun and we have an unbridgeable impasse.  Bloodlust seems to be a key driver behind some players idea of fun, adding more weapons means more bloodshed but is it not the law of diminishing returns to throw weapons into the situation when we already have plenty of violence potential with the present crop of miners, hunters, woodcutters and militia dwarves, plus we have the upcoming mages inherant potential for destruction?  I do not consider violence to be very fun if I do not have any real power over the situation and I am the victim of it, for the outbreak of lethal violence is random. 

This is the second more controversial element, is it even ethical for the devs to pander to the bloodthirsty players idea of fun at the expense of other players ideas of fun in the first place?

While currently grabbing stuff from the communal stockpiles is the way it'd work, eventually (post-economy) it'd be more of a case of the dwarves going to a trader of some sort and buying a weapon with their own earned up coin (also nullifying the whole wasting resources argument). And the point I was trying to make was that having laws banning or allowing weapons for the common folk would be more interesting than just defaulting to not, reflecting human history were that has been an issue for thousands of years, from the ancient romans or japanese etc trying to ban or banning certain parts of society from having war-making weapons up til the present day debates on guns and whatnot. That you think wanting weapons is irrational or self-destructive doesn't change the fact that lots of people past and present have wanted just that, and sometimes to their own detriment yes, but that doesn't mean it's irrational to add to the game. And it has nothing do with sating gamer bloodlust (for me at least, possibly for some, not that there's anything wrong with that), and more with making the game more interesting and thus "fun" for those that find such aspects interesting. And this would be far more controllable than someone randomly dying to a vampire attack tbh, or any number of other things that will doubtless be added in the future to endanger ones dwarves, and actually would help them survive in a lot of cases (and you've made it clear already you think it would have the opposite effect). No offense, but if you want your dwarves to always be 100% safe and live happily ever after you're probably playing the wrong game ;P (tho it has become tamer as of late than what it used to be). Not that there's anything wrong with striving towards that, overcoming those challenges is what I meant was fun for me.

As for changing the game not being ethical, really? (it's very hard to tell if you're trolling or not at times). All games inevitably appeal to different audiences, many to several different ones at the same time, and a game you like (or other entertainment mediums for that matter) changing it's formula either to appease one group more than others or the creators own vision so far as to not be enjoyable anymore is just a fact of life. I could name countless games, movies or whatnot that have done the same to me in the past, and sure you can complain if you must, but they don't have any obligation to create anything other than what they want to (save if under contract with certain criterias to fulfill, say kickstarters etc). And sure, any reasonable creator that wants their creation to be commercially successful will compromise between their vision and what their fans want to such an extent that they keep them happy, but in cases where it's a matter of opposing tastes you're always bound to make one group or the other unhappy whatever you choose (and going too far with a middleground usually just leaves you with a flawed product that neither group wants). Your opinion isn't worth more than anyone elses, nor is mine, which is why we come here and argue hoping to inspire the great Toady and Threetoe to use some of what we've suggested ;P

[Splint]

DF Worlds are horridly dangerous places. The worst we have to deal with IRL apart from other humans might be... A bear. A leopard. A rabid dog, or an angry horse. Or if you're really unlucky a shark or an elephant. And most of those we can fight with a few other humans as back up and long sharp sticks if we have to. Our own world is snuggly and tame by comparison.

If anything, the simple fact of werecreatures alone is justifiable cause to want a spear, club, or knife to defend yourself, because there's just no outrunning that unless you have a significant gap between you and those things, and if you're going to die or be mangled regardless, then maybe you might be able to at least stab it in the leg if you have a knife or break an ankle with a sturdy staff or club and slow it down, saving other citizens' lives and debilitating it to make it easier for the militia to kill. That's not factoring in anything else, that's just an optional piece of content.

That's not factoring in mood-failed berserkers, tantruming children, invading forces, zombies of all kinds, nobles, vampires, tavern brawls, slighting caravan guards. Just werecreatures existing are enough for a dwarf to not feel safe while bringing in wood for the wood furnace, even if the militia is on standby to protect them because it might not do any good, and all they can do to try to save themselves is ineffectually swing thier fists at it at present.

That is all plenty enough to warrant people being either expected to carry a personal arm or it being common and accepted practice to at least give us the option. Those who want to arm themselves can, those who don't, simply won't.

We can argue about resources, militarizing the population, use historic examples and such all we want, but it doesn't change the fact that DF worlds are dangerous enough in and of themselves for this option to exist.

I'm grumpy and tired from work, so please pardon the terseness, but this has gotten out of hand. Hell, it got out of hand with the vampires, I'll cop to that, but it's a revolving door of four arguments regarding enforcing the law (The Fortress Guard doesn't have enough to do anyway,) safety (The Medical Staff finally have more to do than patch goblin-inflicted wounds and FB rot,) resource allocation (our own individual decisions to make) and "Just militarizing  the populace" (which should be an option for us to take, not mandatory, just as this thread's suggestion should to be an option.)

Will everyone enjoy it? Fuck no, absolutely not. Well then make it optional like vampires, night creatures, and almost every other new serious hazard people tend to leave turned on anyway. Make it something as others have said, to be partially handled by us via the admins and nobles. But there is enough reason within the worlds themselves to warrant it as an option, irrespective of any of our own preferences or particular beliefs, which are clearly bleeding heavily into this and should have been left at the damned door.

Spoiler: Highly irrelevant to the discussion, and so spoilered. if you wanna argue about this, feel free to PM me or eachother, but this is not the place for this. (click to show/hide)

Now, as to talking ethics, I think we burned that bridge a long time ago. They drew the line at mermaid concentration camps, but even then they only made the entire reason to do it - profiting from the crafts made of mermaid bones - beyond trying to see if one could it meaningless by nerfing the value of something - we can still build those air-drown camps if we really want to (or apply them to things like sea monsters or sharks or what have you,) and it's common practice to use dogs and cats as both meatshields and food supplies even though to most of us the idea of doing that IRL is abhorrent, as is the idea of incinerating innocent merchants with magma, drowning POWs, or capturing often-defenseless wildlife (or merchants, and POWs) specifically to turn a band of drunken psychos loose on them with blunt objects for combat experience.