Created a new topic here because of this discussion, to turn it into a feature request: How do I make my citizens defend themselves?
I found combat in the early game to be a bit strange and counterintuitive, because right now only guards, soldiers and hunters will apparently defend your settlement.
But for small independent settlements in wild environments, wouldn’t it make much more sense for the villagers to form a militia to organize their defense? A professional standing army is too expensive for a village where every able body is required to work.
Having guards does make sense, but a guard would just be the guy who stands watch and rouses everyone else when an attack happens. Having only dedicated guards do the fighting means you will have a dozen people doing nothing all year except waiting for sporadic attacks to happen, another huge waste of able bodies.
What would feel more realistic is to have guards to sound the alarm, and then have villagers run to find whatever crude weapons they can find to defend the town, while the children and any villagers who can’t find a weapon hide in their shelters. You can even have them use their tools as (very poor) weapons, like how peasants in the real world would use pitchforks to fight when they didn’t have access to weapons. I’m not a historian, but I think that’s how small settlements in the real world organized their defenses in the past.