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[Bumber]

We do restrict the use of motor vehicles, so the analogy fails.

The USA restricts them less than guns, so the analogy stands. Pretty much anyone can buy or rent a car, provided they can pass a driving exam. They can then use that car to run over a crowd of people, and the damage is done. It's not a question of whether they need a car to get to work or not. The demand is so prolific that anybody so determined can get one.

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.

And what of knives for cooking and eating? What of the smith's hammer, craftsman's chisel, and butcher's tools? What of the woodcutter's axe, hunter's bow, and fisher's spear? So much of the fort industry requires potential weapons that it doesn't make sense to leave all your haulers unarmed.
It should also be stated that the average dwarf values martial prowess just as much as goblins do, which is higher than humans. A dwarf feels more comfortable being prepared for a fight.

[Sarmatian123]

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.

To be blunt. You are wrong. Though, it is perfect normal in these days to be wrong about it. In majority of countries militia does not even exist. Those countries, which bother to deploy territorial army usually use operational army reserves. The difference is so significant, that National Guard has even its own HQ in Pentagon, besides other army forces. However, when people look at this like "oh this is just another type of regular army", they are still wrong.

Militia alike special forces are the _IRREGULARS_. Militia is not part of an operational army, but part of territorial army. Militia does not take part in warfare like an army. Militia can lend only support to army. The only application for militia alike regular troops is only through training them also as infantrymen. Militia as infantrymen can be used then effectively in defensive terrain (mostly urban), when you provide them as well with support from artillery forces. This is the only regular military usage of militia. It only exists when you provide infantry training like Switzerland does. Militia cloths are only optional for militia. Militia cloths can be plain civilian as well. They do not have to fight in any uniforms or with any ID. Most war-time laws, which apply to soldiers and armies do not apply to militia and civilians. Militia can even wear masks to hide their ID in time of war, when fighting with enemy forces.

So militia masks and no IDs? How that can fail a covert op, right? Easiest thing ever done. Right? Just breeze through and hurrah! Right?

So let say, we have a militia brigade, around 2500 militiamen in an area. In the large town of the area is stationed one battalion (~500 militiamen). The rest is spread around in smaller towns and larger villages in formation of companies (~100) and platoons (~10). Besides, few weekends in year, Militia Brigade meets up once a year for a week to have some fun on military training grounds. They know their assignments, like who belongs where. They had training in protecting vital infrastructure (even in sabotaging it) and they have explosives to blow those pesky bridges when army needs them blown like yesterday. Though being just armed civilians, they have also their own _paramilitary_ chain of command.

Militia is basically like feudal peasantry, signed by contract (ministry of defense? state's governor?), to belong to a given piece of land. Wrong militia pops out on militia's land, a land covert operators are not assigned as militia for, an instant WTF-calls are being fired up the chain of command and instant region wide alert is set. That's why covert op is doomed to fail.

The catch is local militia knows _WHOM_ locally to expect as local militia! Here masks won't help and missing IDs, if you didn't sleep with those militiamen in the same dirt on the same military training ground, year after year.

Outsiders, will be called up the chain of command and checked out on sight. An instant fail. Few phone calls later, you have in entire region whole militia brigade mobilized and on acute watch, SWAT and police on alert and military HQ through sat phone is now gathering data from entire region, to know if they need to intervene with special forces team on a chopper for surgeon operation or en entire unit of air cavalry to be sent in to carpet blank it.

In militia defended territory, as covert operator, you do want to appear only either as regular army or as civilians. Never ever as militia. Else it is like setting your own hair on fire and then running around screaming very loudly "I am not on fire! Do not look at me! Nothing strange happening! Go about your own business!".

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.

- Do you spend your weekends with your entire neighborhood shooting at range, taking courses and such?
- Do you travel for summer vacations to the same spot with your entire neighborhood, putting camp and fireplace in forest and performing various tasks and exercises together?

So, you're still not convinced about militia being different from civilians and from Army. Did you hear about... Partisans?

[GoblinCookie]

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.

It is not getting out of hand, it is just not going your way.

All the threats you mentioned, they are all better off dealt with by armed squads with proper weapons, training and organisation.  Civilians can just run away and get the squads to deal with them, it is only in the few instances where this is not possible that there is a case for arming civilians.  Problem is that those instances are few in number compared to all the problems that arming civilians causes which makes the world even more dangerous.

We do restrict the use of motor vehicles, so the analogy fails.

The USA restricts them less than guns, so the analogy stands. Pretty much anyone can buy or rent a car, provided they can pass a driving exam. They can then use that car to run over a crowd of people, and the damage is done. It's not a question of whether they need a car to get to work or not. The demand is so prolific that anybody so determined can get one.

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.

And what of knives for cooking and eating? What of the smith's hammer, craftsman's chisel, and butcher's tools? What of the woodcutter's axe, hunter's bow, and fisher's spear? So much of the fort industry requires potential weapons that it doesn't make sense to leave all your haulers unarmed.
It should also be stated that the average dwarf values martial prowess just as much as goblins do, which is higher than humans. A dwarf feels more comfortable being prepared for a fight.

I know, the fact that many civilians are accidentally armed is one more reason why we don't exactly need to arm civilians.

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

Resources are no more wasted if folks buy them from a trader than if they take them from a communal stockpile, ultimately the traders got everything they have *from* a stockpile.  The only condition in which that makes sense is if we added in personal trade WITHOUT adding in the economy, so like with the caravan the trader's goods are just conjured out of thin air.  Economy does not mean personal trade after-all, it just means there are other stockpiles and production in the world outside of the fortress; so the statement about post-economy does not make sense. 

I do not need to troll, I get enough of a hard time as it is without having to try.  I am actually making a serious point, much of the appeal of the game to certain folks is the detailed nature of the violence, which 'accidentally' appealed to the bloodthirsty, though realism was probably the motive behind it.  The more bloodthirsty are ethically inferior to those who are less bloodthirsty, hence it is an ethically unsound thing to favor the bloodthirsty folks at the expense of other people.  You cannot face down a long list of reasons why something is a disaster and then declare that it should be in because it is 'fun', because you are saying the disaster is fun. 

To be blunt. You are wrong. Though, it is perfect normal in these days to be wrong about it. In majority of countries militia does not even exist. Those countries, which bother to deploy territorial army usually use operational army reserves. The difference is so significant, that National Guard has even its own HQ in Pentagon, besides other army forces. However, when people look at this like "oh this is just another type of regular army", they are still wrong.

Militia alike special forces are the _IRREGULARS_. Militia is not part of an operational army, but part of territorial army. Militia does not take part in warfare like an army. Militia can lend only support to army. The only application for militia alike regular troops is only through training them also as infantrymen. Militia as infantrymen can be used then effectively in defensive terrain (mostly urban), when you provide them as well with support from artillery forces. This is the only regular military usage of militia. It only exists when you provide infantry training like Switzerland does. Militia cloths are only optional for militia. Militia cloths can be plain civilian as well. They do not have to fight in any uniforms or with any ID. Most war-time laws, which apply to soldiers and armies do not apply to militia and civilians. Militia can even wear masks to hide their ID in time of war, when fighting with enemy forces.

So militia masks and no IDs? How that can fail a covert op, right? Easiest thing ever done. Right? Just breeze through and hurrah! Right?

So let say, we have a militia brigade, around 2500 militiamen in an area. In the large town of the area is stationed one battalion (~500 militiamen). The rest is spread around in smaller towns and larger villages in formation of companies (~100) and platoons (~10). Besides, few weekends in year, Militia Brigade meets up once a year for a week to have some fun on military training grounds. They know their assignments, like who belongs where. They had training in protecting vital infrastructure (even in sabotaging it) and they have explosives to blow those pesky bridges when army needs them blown like yesterday. Though being just armed civilians, they have also their own _paramilitary_ chain of command.

Militia is basically like feudal peasantry, signed by contract (ministry of defense? state's governor?), to belong to a given piece of land. Wrong militia pops out on militia's land, a land covert operators are not assigned as militia for, an instant WTF-calls are being fired up the chain of command and instant region wide alert is set. That's why covert op is doomed to fail.

The catch is local militia knows _WHOM_ locally to expect as local militia! Here masks won't help and missing IDs, if you didn't sleep with those militiamen in the same dirt on the same military training ground, year after year.

Outsiders, will be called up the chain of command and checked out on sight. An instant fail. Few phone calls later, you have in entire region whole militia brigade mobilized and on acute watch, SWAT and police on alert and military HQ through sat phone is now gathering data from entire region, to know if they need to intervene with special forces team on a chopper for surgeon operation or en entire unit of air cavalry to be sent in to carpet blank it.

In militia defended territory, as covert operator, you do want to appear only either as regular army or as civilians. Never ever as militia. Else it is like setting your own hair on fire and then running around screaming very loudly "I am not on fire! Do not look at me! Nothing strange happening! Go about your own business!".

As I said, we are not talking about organized militia that have been mobilized.  We are talking about armed civilians.  If civilians casually walk around armed, it is not too hard to disguise an entire army as civilians and then have them assemble at a certain place behind enemy lines at a certain time to launch a surprise attack simultaneously, even if the mobilized militia are visually distinguished from the regular civilians. 

- Do you spend your weekends with your entire neighborhood shooting at range, taking courses and such?
- Do you travel for summer vacations to the same spot with your entire neighborhood, putting camp and fireplace in forest and performing various tasks and exercises together?

So, you're still not convinced about militia being different from civilians and from Army. Did you hear about... Partisans?

 

[Manveru Taurënér]

I do not need to troll, I get enough of a hard time as it is without having to try.  I am actually making a serious point, much of the appeal of the game to certain folks is the detailed nature of the violence, which 'accidentally' appealed to the bloodthirsty, though realism was probably the motive behind it.  The more bloodthirsty are ethically inferior to those who are less bloodthirsty, hence it is an ethically unsound thing to favor the bloodthirsty folks at the expense of other people.  You cannot face down a long list of reasons why something is a disaster and then declare that it should be in because it is 'fun', because you are saying the disaster is fun. 

You say you don't troll, and then you write something as ludicrous as the bolded right after? No actual living things are hurt in any way when pixelated dwarves bleed you know. And arguing that people who like violent games or movies or whatnot are inferior to other people is just mindbogglingly silly. I should probably just stop responding, but it's hard to resist when someone keeps writing things you completely disagree with.

Edit: Sorry, that was a bit rude. And can't think of more to add that probably wouldn't end up rude either, so just gonna go back to my let's agree to disagree from earlier which I should've stuck with and not gotten sucked back in. In case you don't realise yourself you do come off as quite dismissive of everyone else though, which along with some rather extreme viewpoints at time makes you come off rather trollish (not saying you are).

[Sarmatian123]

As I said, we are not talking about organized militia that have been mobilized.  We are talking about armed civilians.  If civilians casually walk around armed, it is not too hard to disguise an entire army as civilians and then have them assemble at a certain place behind enemy lines at a certain time to launch a surprise attack simultaneously, even if the mobilized militia are visually distinguished from the regular civilians. 

Purpose of arming civilians is self defense and lowering crime rate. It effectively adds to police force, while granting armed civilians police powers like citizen arrest. It has nothing to do with militia. Armed civilians are not militia.

In most countries civilians need to pass an education course + shooting at a range to be granted purchase of usually non-military grade gun (9mm pistol? hunting rifle?), which perfectly fits the picture of armed civilians. This is also how militia stands out from a crowd of civilian clothed people. Militia carry military grade guns and ammo. So those covert operators, if they plan to use military grade guns, then they have to use military disguises (militia will still send an inquire to militia HQ, for them to ask in their turn an army HQ about "WTF these troopers doing here without anyone being notified locally?") or as civilians bring those military guns covertly in.

- Do you spend your weekends with your entire neighborhood shooting at range, taking courses and such?
- Do you travel for summer vacations to the same spot with your entire neighborhood, putting camp and fireplace in forest and performing various tasks and exercises together?

So, you're still not convinced about militia being different from civilians and from Army. Did you hear about... Partisans?

 

Yup. Exactly. Weekend warriors have one or two weeks long maneuvers on military training grounds. It happens one year or another. Summer time also.

Militia can not be defeated in regular battle. Militia is not a part of operational army, so it does not take action in any regular battle. Outside of skirmishes and ambushes of course. Or if they are partially performing in defensive terrain role of light infantry, but you need to send them also artillery forces as backup and that's just temporary assignment for them. They will leave their post, if this action will cause their defeat. Militia not soldiers. Militia always stays put in their designed area no matter where front line is. Like feudal peasantry bound to their piece of land. Behind enemy lines militia turns automatically into partisans. For any regular army having any partisans whatsoever operating behind their front line is a real nightmare. Entire divisions have to be stationed in garrisons behind, just to secure supply lines. Usually the best method to defeat irregulars like militia, is a hearts-and-minds operation carried to entire local populace. In Iraq USA spent fortune bribing Hussein militia to be loyal to newly installed by USA Iraqi government. They caused havoc in Iraq for over decade and creating such an administrative vacuum, that even ISIS claimed piece of Iraq for many years as part of their own country. Northern Iraq can even go for independence now, the only issue there is just Turkey. Never underestimate well armed and trained militia.

[Splint]

Okay, I see what the issue is here.

Our political beliefs aside, one side is (using Wikipedia's definition) essentially stating what is needed is a Civil Protection/Defense program, which  "is an effort to protect the citizens of a state (generally non-combatants) from military attacks and natural disasters." The other is functionally arguing against that.

This is different from putting everyone in the militia, which is functionally a dwarf site's standing army, being used for both offensive and defensive operations. It might not be that in practice, depending on the player, but that's the function it fulfills.

Arguments regarding safety during interpersonal conflicts and Law Enforcement are valid criticisms, but they are also more pluses than minuses, addressed further below.

One argument is to throw everyone into the fortress's de facto standing army, which isn't really ideal, and does not take dwarves' preferences and personalities into account. This is in fact, one of the arguments for allowing access to private arms irrespective of the militia, as it allows those dwarves foolhardy and whatnot enough to keep a weapon and fight regardless of what the player wants, to do so.

This seems to be irreconcilable.
Okay, well. How about a middle ground? Civil Militia - An unorganized military force comprised of explicit volunteers. You have no control of who is in it apart from taking those volunteers out and putting them into the proper fortress militia. Their "squad" is shown on the squad screen not with names, but just as a number of however many dwarves are in it, and the leader is the highest ranking militia officer who is on map and not incapacitated, which will usually be the Militia Commander.

This force can be activated and will follow kill orders presumably given by the officer they're currently tailing, and follow move orders given to that squad. The squad they're following for the duration of the incident will be marked with "CM" next to them in the squad menu, and when inactive, these dwarves need to wait until the militia has armed itself (negating the resource allocation argument further) before they can take any weapons if taking them fromt he fortress stocks, or further down the road, they may use weapons they made or bought, taking pressure of the Militia's armory some. If a threat appears, they will fight the threat while the more timid elements flee from the danger.

This also meshes well with vigilantism (as those same dwarves in this unorganized force will be the ones likely to try and take vampires, thieves, and murderers on directly by feigning sleep to ambush them,) and takes the "armed mob" concept and makes it functionally a player-ordered event. Additionally, these dwarves will use any barracks with an assigned squad and watch thier sparring and training sessions, allowing them to train without us having to add another space specifically for them - they can learn directly from the actual military in thier own free time.

This force cannot be used in offensive actions off site, and is not armored or given food and ale provisions like the militia, but it does provide a body of armed and "conflict compatible" dwarves to fight in an emergency plus allows those dwarves who "enlist" in the Civil Militia to functionally be an informal escort force for the general population, and informal sentries to deal with snatchers and kobolds.

If a real threat comes, they'll have a weapon and possibly some training to commit suicide with, since these dwarves would be liable to attack ambushers, zombies, and animals anyway, and might slow down the threat or even kill one or two attackers, in the case of invaders while the Militia is in transit to the problem spot.

While they might use these weapons on eachother in arguments and tavern brawls (or if they flip shit due to stress) this still gives a greater need to even having law enforcement in the fortress besides the one guy who failed a production mandate or accidentally violated an export ban, as well as potentially have a reason beyond "fortress is already collapsing" to have a Hammerer, as well as give the medical staff needed experience.

And to top it off, we can round this out with a configurable option to enable or disable this like temperature, weather, and invasions in general, giving everyone access tot his if they want it, and not having to put up with it if they don't.

Note, the above was put together with an outside observer's input, and so is largely clear of any biases on my end apart from the "rah rah, more violence, more chaos!" part of me that most of us have on some level with this game

[Sarmatian123]

@Splint , +1

I vote AYE to Splint's proposal. Until forming formal military, militia should be the army on the site. Territorial one, but still an army. No armor of course. Like woodcutters, miners and hunters, who could count into it automatically I think. Militia Commander already exists in the game. It would work perfectly with woodcutters, miners and hunters hate to wear military grade uniforms.

[Splint]

@Splint , +1

I vote AYE to Splint's proposal. Until forming formal military, militia should be the army on the site. Territorial one, but still an army. No armor of course. Like woodcutters, miners and hunters, who could count into it automatically I think. Militia Commander already exists in the game. It would work perfectly with woodcutters, miners and hunters hate to wear military grade uniforms.

I suppose it would be okay to lump those jobs which come pre-packed with a weapon into it, yeah, and that is functionally what it'd be; hence not being able to deploy this blob of dudes aboard to attack other sites like we can with the Fortress Militia proper. The main thing is this Civil Force exists solely to add meat to defensive operations, and provide a de facto protective force from minor hazards and intruders without us having to manage a bunch of individual squad assignments (and as it doesn't allow for uniforms, only using a weapons of thier choosing, the pre-packed jobs will simply default to thier work tool and not have any equipment troubles.)

Sure, bigger threats will still run roughshod over them, but that's a part of the fun and the storytelling.

Plus when you activate it, it provides a handy list of all the suitable military candidates based on personality or values. 

[Anandar]

Why not run it like a localised defensive conscription so if a situation arrives that needs more dwarfpower for any reason eg militia off raiding, and your fort comes under attack or early fort and no militia setup or trained, similar to burrows but any brave/foolhardy dwarves run to a stockpile of weapons and armour designated for emergency defence and take what they want or can get to help any remaining militia if any at all in defending your fort from say a werebeast or a pack of wolves...

[Sarmatian123]

Why not run it like a localised defensive conscription so if a situation arrives that needs more dwarfpower for any reason eg militia off raiding, and your fort comes under attack or early fort and no militia setup or trained, similar to burrows but any brave/foolhardy dwarves run to a stockpile of weapons and armour designated for emergency defence and take what they want or can get to help any remaining militia if any at all in defending your fort from say a werebeast or a pack of wolves...

Well, it could be and was actually done in real life. It is not proper militia though. There are still few countries, who organize their national army in this failed way on top of militia.

Though militia is neither ad hoc armed civilians, ad hoc civilian conscripts rushed into army nor an army proper. Irregulars like rangers/hunters are also the best historical fit for militia. Adding any miners, woodcutters and militarily trained Dwarves without military assignment to a squad is here the proper solution for standing militia.

There is in forum already a suggestion for fitting civilians with knives, which could be used by civilians for self defense. Effective against thieves. It could solve issue of marksmen bashing enemies with their light wooden crossbows.

Ad hoc armed civilians could be temporarily added in bulk to militia squad. Militia squad could have that as an option after being put on a task with s-key. Even civilian military Dwarves temporary out of training or assignment, doing their civilian jobs, could be drafted temporarily into militia squad this way too.

It is really sad that military Dwarves were added into DF without Civilian Defense (alike firefighters, medics or police force herding kids to safety) and Militia being sorted out properly. Like the mess it is sometimes in some hopeless countries in the world, which are beyond any military help really. However when you have useless good for nothing people out of the street voted into law making body of country and they sit there days after days starring at empty paper... In the end they will start filling it with ink to make some corrupt coin here and there. Messing with how things should work properly. Democracy is not perfect, but we didn't invent anything better yet, unfortunately.

[GoblinCookie]

You say you don't troll, and then you write something as ludicrous as the bolded right after? No actual living things are hurt in any way when pixelated dwarves bleed you know. And arguing that people who like violent games or movies or whatnot are inferior to other people is just mindbogglingly silly. I should probably just stop responding, but it's hard to resist when someone keeps writing things you completely disagree with.

Edit: Sorry, that was a bit rude. And can't think of more to add that probably wouldn't end up rude either, so just gonna go back to my let's agree to disagree from earlier which I should've stuck with and not gotten sucked back in. In case you don't realise yourself you do come off as quite dismissive of everyone else though, which along with some rather extreme viewpoints at time makes you come off rather trollish (not saying you are).

It is a complicated thing to explain and last time I tried to explain it, it ended up with the thread locked and myself warned by the devs (quite rightly ).  You have a group of people, it is never one person and it is seldom more than three, but let's call them the trio for the sake of argument.  The trio see things in more or less exactly the same way and as a result there is exists a 'cosy consensus', which to everyone else is effectively a form of censorship.  The thread is quite harmonious and on-track, in the sense that the train goes round and around to nowhere.  Because people do not want to upset the cosy consensus and dislike conflict, most people carefully keep things within the 'brackets' that the trio have initially set by their own internal consensus and intellectual blind-spots; this is how the trio effectively censor the discussion.  But if someone who is fundamentally unalike the trio in their thinking comes along then they have to crack down, because they like how the thread is defined entirely by their limitations of their own thinking.  The cracking down methods vary, but they tend to involve derailing the thread altogether so as to ensure that the new elements are not 'connected' with the old elements and they can continue to start new threads to 'reboot' the process.

Now your response to what I said is a classic example of how this works in practice.  The connection between fun and ethics is *not* to be made, it is an illegal move to the trio, outside of the parameters of their cosy consensus.  But actually it is entirely commonsensical to most people, because tastes are part of a person's character.  Say if I invent two fictional characters, both of which atom-smashes babies but the reason for doing so is different.  One of them kills babies because they need baby-juice for a potion to save the love of their life but the other one kills babies because killing babies is fun; most people would consider the latter person worse than the former person.  You could argue they are on an even-playing field since both do the same thing, but that is actually an extreme position to hold, as most people take character traits into account not just actions. 

So why do I appear extreme?  That is because it is the trio that decides what is moderate based upon their own views, which may actually be utterly extreme, as the separation between fun and ethics very much is.  This is a trick quite beloved of trios, they can present themselves as moderate, since they represent a consensus view.  But a consensus view held by an extreme minority that dominates an area does not become moderate simply because they can keep debate within the parameters of their worldview does it?  The trio brought about a harmonious consensus initially, hence anyone who challenges the parameters of that consensus is disruptive and hence also extremist because people falsely believe that disruptive = extremist.

Purpose of arming civilians is self defense and lowering crime rate. It effectively adds to police force, while granting armed civilians police powers like citizen arrest. It has nothing to do with militia. Armed civilians are not militia.

In most countries civilians need to pass an education course + shooting at a range to be granted purchase of usually non-military grade gun (9mm pistol? hunting rifle?), which perfectly fits the picture of armed civilians. This is also how militia stands out from a crowd of civilian clothed people. Militia carry military grade guns and ammo. So those covert operators, if they plan to use military grade guns, then they have to use military disguises (militia will still send an inquire to militia HQ, for them to ask in their turn an army HQ about "WTF these troopers doing here without anyone being notified locally?") or as civilians bring those military guns covertly in.

You keep talking about militia, even though you admit that militia is a separate issue to armed civilians.  A militia means a military force made up folks who are normally civilians, doing civilian things but can be mobilized for military purposes.  We already have a militia, the point of this thread is the discussion of weapons-carry beyond the scope of the militia, which I am against since it has almost no advantages and numerous disadvantages. 

How does arming civilians protect them against crime when the criminals are themselves armed.  You seem to have forgotten that criminals *are* civilians, so if you give weapons to civilians then you give weapons to criminals to hurt other civilians.  Since there is a parity of armament between criminal civilians and non-criminal civilians, how does arming civilians help protect them against crime in any shape or form. 

It gets worse.  If two heavily armed individuals fight then the outcome is a lot worse than if two unarmed individuals fight.  If a criminal who is unarmed, robs an individual that is unarmed the criminal has the option of not killing their victims and simply taking their things.  If a criminal who is armed takes on a victim who is armed then the criminal has to kill the victim, because otherwise the victim might kill the criminal. 

Then it gets worse on top of that.  The criminals have a natural organization and surprise advantage over their victims, but they take still greater risks the more powerful the weapons available to both sides are.  This means they are incentivized to increase their level of organisation and we end up with large groups of armed criminals (this bandits) as opposed to smaller groups or individual criminals acting alone.  If the criminals consists of armies of hundreds or thousands of members, it does not matter if individual civilians have weapons equivalent to them. 

Then it gets even worse even on top of that.  In a society with unarmed civilians, the criminals cannot hope to prevail against law-enforcement, so they don't bother; since they cannot marshall enough illegal weapons in order to field enough fighters to plausibly win.  Having been militerised though, our criminal elements now find themselves in a position to do just that, weaponry is freely available and they are organized along military lines in order to deal with their armed victims reliably. 

To bring things to the ultimate level of badness.  The law enforcement and criminals both learn that conflict is more expensive than cooperation.  So we end with a de-facto pact by which the law enforcement withdraws from the area that law-enforcement don't care about while the law-enforcement in return is left alone to guard the government.  The government at this point essentially at this point has become criminal, so everyone is happy (except for the law-abiding population). 

Okay, I see what the issue is here.

Our political beliefs aside, one side is (using Wikipedia's definition) essentially stating what is needed is a Civil Protection/Defense program, which  "is an effort to protect the citizens of a state (generally non-combatants) from military attacks and natural disasters." The other is functionally arguing against that.

This is different from putting everyone in the militia, which is functionally a dwarf site's standing army, being used for both offensive and defensive operations. It might not be that in practice, depending on the player, but that's the function it fulfills.

Arguments regarding safety during interpersonal conflicts and Law Enforcement are valid criticisms, but they are also more pluses than minuses, addressed further below.

One argument is to throw everyone into the fortress's de facto standing army, which isn't really ideal, and does not take dwarves' preferences and personalities into account. This is in fact, one of the arguments for allowing access to private arms irrespective of the militia, as it allows those dwarves foolhardy and whatnot enough to keep a weapon and fight regardless of what the player wants, to do so.

This seems to be irreconcilable.
Okay, well. How about a middle ground? Civil Militia - An unorganized military force comprised of explicit volunteers. You have no control of who is in it apart from taking those volunteers out and putting them into the proper fortress militia. Their "squad" is shown on the squad screen not with names, but just as a number of however many dwarves are in it, and the leader is the highest ranking militia officer who is on map and not incapacitated, which will usually be the Militia Commander.

This force can be activated and will follow kill orders presumably given by the officer they're currently tailing, and follow move orders given to that squad. The squad they're following for the duration of the incident will be marked with "CM" next to them in the squad menu, and when inactive, these dwarves need to wait until the militia has armed itself (negating the resource allocation argument further) before they can take any weapons if taking them fromt he fortress stocks, or further down the road, they may use weapons they made or bought, taking pressure of the Militia's armory some. If a threat appears, they will fight the threat while the more timid elements flee from the danger.

This also meshes well with vigilantism (as those same dwarves in this unorganized force will be the ones likely to try and take vampires, thieves, and murderers on directly by feigning sleep to ambush them,) and takes the "armed mob" concept and makes it functionally a player-ordered event. Additionally, these dwarves will use any barracks with an assigned squad and watch thier sparring and training sessions, allowing them to train without us having to add another space specifically for them - they can learn directly from the actual military in thier own free time.

This force cannot be used in offensive actions off site, and is not armored or given food and ale provisions like the militia, but it does provide a body of armed and "conflict compatible" dwarves to fight in an emergency plus allows those dwarves who "enlist" in the Civil Militia to functionally be an informal escort force for the general population, and informal sentries to deal with snatchers and kobolds.

If a real threat comes, they'll have a weapon and possibly some training to commit suicide with, since these dwarves would be liable to attack ambushers, zombies, and animals anyway, and might slow down the threat or even kill one or two attackers, in the case of invaders while the Militia is in transit to the problem spot.

While they might use these weapons on eachother in arguments and tavern brawls (or if they flip shit due to stress) this still gives a greater need to even having law enforcement in the fortress besides the one guy who failed a production mandate or accidentally violated an export ban, as well as potentially have a reason beyond "fortress is already collapsing" to have a Hammerer, as well as give the medical staff needed experience.

And to top it off, we can round this out with a configurable option to enable or disable this like temperature, weather, and invasions in general, giving everyone access tot his if they want it, and not having to put up with it if they don't.

Note, the above was put together with an outside observer's input, and so is largely clear of any biases on my end apart from the "rah rah, more violence, more chaos!" part of me that most of us have on some level with this game

Historically militias were used for offensive purposes, the Roman Legions were originally just militias and only later became a standing army.  If the only reason to have this idea is so that we cannot use them for offensive purposes, this really does not fit well with the fact that for most of history civilian militias were used for offensive purposes.  And the militias we currently have are not standing armies. 

It is not I don't like the ideas above, it is just I fail to see what they add to the game that the militia currently does not potentially add.  There is no explicit reason we cannot have volunteer militias on top of our existing conscript militias, but that is not really either a big change nor does it require a whole new set of mechanics beyond the 'form voluntary militia squad' mechanic itself. 

[Manveru Taurënér]

Off-topic

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It is a complicated thing to explain and last time I tried to explain it, it ended up with the thread locked and myself warned by the devs (quite rightly ).  You have a group of people, it is never one person and it is seldom more than three, but let's call them the trio for the sake of argument.  The trio see things in more or less exactly the same way and as a result there is exists a 'cosy consensus', which to everyone else is effectively a form of censorship.  The thread is quite harmonious and on-track, in the sense that the train goes round and around to nowhere.  Because people do not want to upset the cosy consensus and dislike conflict, most people carefully keep things within the 'brackets' that the trio have initially set by their own internal consensus and intellectual blind-spots; this is how the trio effectively censor the discussion.  But if someone who is fundamentally unalike the trio in their thinking comes along then they have to crack down, because they like how the thread is defined entirely by their limitations of their own thinking.  The cracking down methods vary, but they tend to involve derailing the thread altogether so as to ensure that the new elements are not 'connected' with the old elements and they can continue to start new threads to 'reboot' the process.

Now your response to what I said is a classic example of how this works in practice.  The connection between fun and ethics is *not* to be made, it is an illegal move to the trio, outside of the parameters of their cosy consensus.  But actually it is entirely commonsensical to most people, because tastes are part of a person's character.  Say if I invent two fictional characters, both of which atom-smashes babies but the reason for doing so is different.  One of them kills babies because they need baby-juice for a potion to save the love of their life but the other one kills babies because killing babies is fun; most people would consider the latter person worse than the former person.  You could argue they are on an even-playing field since both do the same thing, but that is actually an extreme position to hold, as most people take character traits into account not just actions. 

So why do I appear extreme?  That is because it is the trio that decides what is moderate based upon their own views, which may actually be utterly extreme, as the separation between fun and ethics very much is.  This is a trick quite beloved of trios, they can present themselves as moderate, since they represent a consensus view.  But a consensus view held by an extreme minority that dominates an area does not become moderate simply because they can keep debate within the parameters of their worldview does it?  The trio brought about a harmonious consensus initially, hence anyone who challenges the parameters of that consensus is disruptive and hence also extremist because people falsely believe that disruptive = extremist.

While I get what you're saying to some extent, I don't agree I'm part of any trio or other group-think constellations. The unbridgeable impasse you mentioned was what I was aiming for at least when it became obvious we had irreconcilable opinions, because that's kind of the only good result one can hope for in a lot of cases (I get the feeling from how you mentioned it that you don't agree with that though), and while I tried to emphasize all I said was very much only my opinion as I usually try in order to not escalate discussions I failed somewhat (I'm really bad at social interactions of most kinds and generally shy away from posting specifically not to end up in situations like this, but had the bad timing of currently trying not to be such a scaredy-cat) and got dragged back by the feeling you were attacking my posts in an attempt to somehow win (which imo is really annoying when it comes to discussions of taste, which is what games/entertainment/art is, at "best" all you'll do is silence your opposition). And yeah, going into ethics crosses a line but only for me afaik (no one else commented on it that I saw anyhow). Making the assumption that the person who likes killing babies in games for fun or similar is somehow a worse person than anyone else is insulting and imo unacceptable. A person could be a living saint IRL and still enjoy living out things in video games etc that are completely counter to who they really are and if real would be horrible yes, but since it's imaginary does in no way reflect on them as a person in any way (being a jerk to people in multiplayer games being one exception). Don't really care if that's thought of as commonsensical or not, common sense is usually more linked to what the majority thinks rather than actually making sense. Really should stop responding though, while both interesting and frustrating this whole thing is way more than I can handle atm (and has only served to reinforce the feeling that I probably should just give up on trying to share my viewpoints on things online because I don't seem to be able to do it without failing one way or another) xP

[Splint]

The militias we currently have are not standing armies. 

Strictly speaking no, but for all intents they act as such being the standing army of a given fortress, and many, many players treat at least a portion of the militia as just that - a standing military force with no other job than to do various unpleasant things to whoever the fort deems to be in need of some extra holes, could do with a few liters of blood removed from thier bodies, or in need of a less solid skull, and can be utilized in a non-defensive manner as force projection, like a 'typical' state army can be used.

Spoiler: Plus that also depends on how a given player treats their militias. Let us have some examples. (click to show/hide)

My Marksdwarves and Fortress Guard for example, are actual militia in the traditional sense - they usually have jobs outside of killing people and breaking things to do and train either in thier off time or once every season or every other season depending on if I remember to set a training schedule or not. But my melee squads are comprised of full-time dedicated dwarves-at-arms, whose whole job in the fortress consists only of training for battle or participating in it. This full time element is my standing army, while the rest is comprised of part-time militia I drag out to fight if I think I need some fire support or a few extra hittin' sticks (I arm my Fortress Guards with maces, because i think punishments should hurt )

Another person may have zero full time soldiers, having them train maybe once a season, every second season, or once a year. This would be what most people probably think of as a militia, for reference. Nobody in that force is an actual dedicated full-time killer, they just happen to be as Sarmatian put it, "Weekend Warriors" who are called up to fight on an as-needed basis, and have proper organization and equipment provided by the fortress government.

And yet another may have nothing but professional soldiers across the board for thier militia, which results of course in a wholly professional army, not really a militia, at least not in the sense majority of people would think of it.

It is not I don't like the ideas above, it is just I fail to see what they add to the game that the militia currently does not potentially add.  There is no explicit reason we cannot have volunteer militias on top of our existing conscript militias, but that is not really either a big change nor does it require a whole new set of mechanics beyond the 'form voluntary militia squad' mechanic itself.

The main difference is function, organization, supply, and utility - The Fortress Militia is an organized fighting force in some capacity, fully armed, armored, and provisioned and able to act outside the fortress map.

The Civil Militia is not organized, at least not to any great degree, nor supplied beyond possibly weapons by the site government (no uniforms to manage or weapons/armor being juggled between squads as new stuff becomes available from the forges,) or empowered to leave the fortress grounds to attack other sites. Though this does give me an idea of having the Civil Militia be under the purview of the local Law Enforcement admins, since they'll probably be on site at all times anyway, giving us a reason to have a Sheriff early on, as they can also be assumed to be keeping track of who has what weapon checked out of the armories.

Their function is entirely defensive in nature, to provide not an organized fighting force, but just a blob of armed dudes who you can be reasonably sure won't run away on first contact with an enemy to protect the fortress with, with minimal actual management on our part (no needing to assign squad leaders and positions in the squad,) and to act as workplace security from minor hazards like animals and snatchers, per the general intent of the thread to begin with, and if something like a werebast attacks, having that weapon may be what makes a difference between a dozen deaths and just the one or two Civil Militadorfs' own if they manage to inflict a hand/arm or leg crippling wound.

The Utility is the greatly reduced micromanagement on our end - There's no officers, no positions just "blob of armed dudes" perhaps under the Sheriff or Captain of the Guard, separate from the latter's law officers. When you need a bunch of dudes to just grab some weapons and attack something, it'd be much faster with this (as they would have already armed themselves,) than having to manually throw everyone into a dozen 10 man squads and them having to run around to get thier weapons and if you used a uniform template, armor, with squadmates who possibly won't even fight or not do so for very long once bodies hit the floor minus a pulse - Being either too afraid to fight and running away at first contact or too horrified to do more than be a test dummy for goblin swords and whips (which to be fair can happen with the enemy too if they're not the combative sorts or lacking in discipline.) Plus like I said before, activating it gives us a handy dandy list of the best militia candidates psychologically speaking, which would also save people a ton of time hand-selecting thier fightin' dorfs based on that. :3

Edited a bit to fix some poor wording.

[Sarmatian123]

It is not I don't like the ideas above, it is just I fail to see what they add to the game that the militia currently does not potentially add.  There is no explicit reason we cannot have volunteer militias on top of our existing conscript militias, but that is not really either a big change nor does it require a whole new set of mechanics beyond the 'form voluntary militia squad' mechanic itself.

The main difference is function, organization, supply, and utility - The Fortress Militia is an organized fighting force in some capacity, fully armed, armored, and provisioned and able to act outside the fortress map.

The Civil Militia is not organized, at leats not to any great degree, nor supplied beyond possibly weapons by the site government (no uniforms to manage or be juggled between squads,) or empowered to leave the fortress grounds to attack other sites. Though this does give me an idea of having the Civil Militia be under the purview of the local Law Enforcement admins, since they'll probably be on site at all times anyway, giving us a reason to have a Sheriff early on, as they can also be assumed to be keeping track of who has what weapon checked out of the armories.

Their function is entirely defensive in nature, to provide not an organized fighting force, but just a blob of armed dudes who you can be reasonably sure won't run away on first contact with an enemy to protect the fortress with, with minimal actual management on our part (no needing to assign squad leaders and positions in the squad,) and to act as workplace security from minor hazards like animals and snatchers, per the general intent of the thread to begin with, and if something like a werebast attacks, having that weapon may be what makes a difference between a dozen deaths and just his own.

The Utility is the greatly reduced micromanagement on our end - There's no officers, no positions just "blob of armed dudes" perhaps under the Sheriff or Captain of the Guard, separate from the latter's law officers. When you need a bunch of dudes to just grab some weapons and attack something, it'd be much faster with this (as they would have already armed themselves,) than having to manually throw everyone into a dozen 10 man squads and them having to run around to get thier weapons which probably now have a portion that won't even fight or not do so for very long once bodies hit the floor with the souls now deprted.

I agree with Splint. Splint explains how it works with militia more biologically, naturally and less theoretically, then I do. It is sad how it came that even majority of army officers today don't get it. Though everything about forming civil defense (medical rescue, firefighting, police), territorial army (militia, army reserve) and operational army (air, land, navy, special forces) and their functional elements is covered in all elementary military textbooks already from 19th century. I guess all it goes down to be about funding from state. Everybody defending their own professional corporations. Making opponents non-existent.

[GoblinCookie]

Strictly speaking no, but for all intents they act as such being the standing army of a given fortress, and many, many players treat at least a portion of the militia as just that - a standing military force with no other job than to do various unpleasant things to whoever the fort deems to be in need of some extra holes, could do with a few liters of blood removed from thier bodies, or in need of a less solid skull, and can be utilized in a non-defensive manner as force projection, like a 'typical' state army can be used.

Spoiler: Plus that also depends on how a given player treats their militias. Let us have some examples. (click to show/hide)

My Marksdwarves and Fortress Guard for example, are actual militia in the traditional sense - they usually have jobs outside of killing people and breaking things to do and train either in thier off time or once every season or every other season depending on if I remember to set a training schedule or not. But my melee squads are comprised of full-time dedicated dwarves-at-arms, whose whole job in the fortress consists only of training for battle or participating in it. This full time element is my standing army, while the rest is comprised of part-time militia I drag out to fight if I think I need some fire support or a few extra hittin' sticks (I arm my Fortress Guards with maces, because i think punishments should hurt )

Another person may have zero full time soldiers, having them train maybe once a season, every second season, or once a year. This would be what most people probably think of as a militia, for reference. Nobody in that force is an actual dedicated full-time killer, they just happen to be as Sarmatian put it, "Weekend Warriors" who are called up to fight on an as-needed basis, and have proper organization and equipment provided by the fortress government.

And yet another may have nothing but professional soldiers across the board for thier militia, which results of course in a wholly professional army, not really a militia, at least not in the sense majority of people would think of it.

The sharp distinction between standing army and militia does not exist in reality.  A militia is one side of the spectrum, a standing army is the other side of the spectrum; the player decides at the moment where along the spectrum their 'militia' will be.  What you seem to be proposing it that we create a mechanically 'pure' militia with restrictions on what can be done in order to enforce this distinction. 

The distinction between militia and standing army is this.  A militia consists of people of a certain civilian status who are temporarily 'activated' in order to become for a period of time soldiers or to train.  A standing army consists of people who are at all times soldiers, if they are not fighting they are training to fight.  By that definition the mechanics of the game presently support militias, standing armies and anything in the middle. 

A militia basically means that we have people with a civilian status who are given a military status temporarily, the player can choose to have his militia dwarves eternally active hence making them a standing army but that is not what the mechanics dictate.  There is also no reason why because they can choose to have a standing army, they must be given some mechanically enforced militia status in addition to the standing army; if the player wants such a militia they can have one already. 

Militias are a hard concept for us modern people to understand.  The reason is that due to Capitalism the majority of people in modern societies are proletariat and owing to the nature of how they work it is not possible for them to be militia.  If you have an employment contract with so and so, you cannot just go off to fight as a militiaman because that is would mean changing your job from whatever you were before to militiaman.  Of course if militiaman is a 'job' then you are a standing army soldier, not a militiaman. 

Not so in older societies because there what most people have instead of a job is property and social status.  If a landed peasant goes off to fight in a militia, he still has his land and his social status remains peasant when he returns.  Plus people tend to live in fairly large households and a few members can leave the household for a long time without the whole farm falling to ruin, problem tends to be that at for instance harvest-time you do need every able body; so protracted conflict risks famine. 

The Roman legions were originally militias, not standing armies; the rich people would fight as cavalry, the middle-income people would fight as legionaries as we tend to think of them and the poorer people would fight as fast-moving slingers or javelin-throwers.  There are also distinctions of age, the oldest of the middle-income people would fight as a line of spearmen behind the 'legionnaires', while the youngest of the wealthier people tended to fight as javelin-throwers, overlapping with the poorer elements.

The Romans mantained the system till about 88BC(?) when the Marian reforms led them to adopt a standing army recruited from the whole of society irrespective of their social status.  By this point they had already conquered the whole of Italy, Spain, western North Africa and Greece, so the idea of citizen militias as being necessarily defensive in character has no historical basis. 

The main difference is function, organization, supply, and utility - The Fortress Militia is an organized fighting force in some capacity, fully armed, armored, and provisioned and able to act outside the fortress map.

The Civil Militia is not organized, at least not to any great degree, nor supplied beyond possibly weapons by the site government (no uniforms to manage or weapons/armor being juggled between squads as new stuff becomes available from the forges,) or empowered to leave the fortress grounds to attack other sites. Though this does give me an idea of having the Civil Militia be under the purview of the local Law Enforcement admins, since they'll probably be on site at all times anyway, giving us a reason to have a Sheriff early on, as they can also be assumed to be keeping track of who has what weapon checked out of the armories.

Their function is entirely defensive in nature, to provide not an organized fighting force, but just a blob of armed dudes who you can be reasonably sure won't run away on first contact with an enemy to protect the fortress with, with minimal actual management on our part (no needing to assign squad leaders and positions in the squad,) and to act as workplace security from minor hazards like animals and snatchers, per the general intent of the thread to begin with, and if something like a werebast attacks, having that weapon may be what makes a difference between a dozen deaths and just the one or two Civil Militadorfs' own if they manage to inflict a hand/arm or leg crippling wound.

The Utility is the greatly reduced micromanagement on our end - There's no officers, no positions just "blob of armed dudes" perhaps under the Sheriff or Captain of the Guard, separate from the latter's law officers. When you need a bunch of dudes to just grab some weapons and attack something, it'd be much faster with this (as they would have already armed themselves,) than having to manually throw everyone into a dozen 10 man squads and them having to run around to get thier weapons and if you used a uniform template, armor, with squadmates who possibly won't even fight or not do so for very long once bodies hit the floor minus a pulse - Being either too afraid to fight and running away at first contact or too horrified to do more than be a test dummy for goblin swords and whips (which to be fair can happen with the enemy too if they're not the combative sorts or lacking in discipline.) Plus like I said before, activating it gives us a handy dandy list of the best militia candidates psychologically speaking, which would also save people a ton of time hand-selecting thier fightin' dorfs based on that. :3

Edited a bit to fix some poor wording.

When I arrive at a new embark, I put all my miners and woodcutters into a squad, without in any way modifying their equipment in the process.  That is simply so if wild beasts attack any of me dwarves I can dispatch them, the idea then that we need a special new category of civil militia to represent the less well armed elements does not work when there is nothing guaranteeing that the militia dwarves are even armed at all. 

There is merit in your proposal however, with a bit of tweaking.  What we really want to represent is how a very militant civilian dwarf would behave in the event of a crisis that threatens the survival of the fortress.  What we need are 'militia-points' which can be assigned by a player and which by default are any meeting areas in the fortress.  When a civilian gets into trouble, rather than running randomly away from the threat and then stopping, he makes a beeline for the militia-point.  If enough civilians take refuge at the militia point, then the braver/more militeristic/more violent etc among them, head to the weapons and armor stockpiles to equip themselves with whatever weapons and armor that there is.  While en-route to the militia-point such dwarves will also pick up weapons and armour that falls within the visual range as long as they do not actually see any danger. 

In any case once the militant dwarves have got suitable weapons and as much armor as they can actually feasibly wear they become activated 'temporary' militia squads and will use the militia point as their barracks, training there.  Such squads are fully controllable, with the exception that they cannot be deactivated nor sent off site.  Once the threat has passed (the game records the purpose of the temporary militia squad) the squads deactivate and disband at the same time.