Every time I start a new town, I have the same difficult choice - I want a peaceful, pacifist, and chill game, but I know eventually I’ll reach a point where I would welcome the challenge of raiders. Or, I start a new town without pacifist mode, but eventually the raiders become so overwhelming not for my town, but for my PC, that I have no choice but to move on…
The new guildhall inspired this idea - what if we can build some sort of diplomacy building - say an “Consular’s Office” or a “Mission” or a “Local Affairs Bureau” - where we can exchange gold for a ceasefire or detente - so the raiders are still around, but neither side are allowed to initiate any hostilities?
This way the player would be able to basically turn Pacifist Mode on and off in game…
In the future this may even be expanded further to recruit raiders to become citizens or remove camps and gaining relics by “converting” raiders if a player as a high-enough spirituality rating…
This could be tied in with the often-requested modification of Pacific Mode to include or exclude Predatory Animals - a lot of people want to keep wolves and bears and boars but exclude Raiders, and vice-versa. Since no consul or diplomat has much effect on boars or bears, the No Raiders Pacifist option could be modified separately by some action - including, perhaps, a version of the one Relic already in the game that makes Raiders more dangerous, that could have a variation that in Pacifist Mode removes the Raider part of Pacifist so you can start playing with raids.
The only problem - and it might be a ‘feature’ for some - is that you cannot predict when your Raider Option would start: you might get a relevant relic in a ruin right next to your starting position, you might have to wait until you had 2 - 3000 Gold piled up to buy it from a Merchant - and in any case, you cannot even consider it until you’ve built a Temple.
I don’t think any of those are actually that important, because if you set your Advanced Options to Pioneer for Raiders, my experience is that the first trivial Raid (9 - 11 Raiders) doesn’t start until 7 - 9 years into the game. At that low level of Raiding, starting the first raid later or starting with more Raiders does not appreciably stress your early development, IMHO.
The other thing to consider is just how much control the gamer should have: should it be his/her option to ‘enact’ the Relic to start Raiders, or do Raiders start automatically when the relic is bought or excavated, which could make buying or excavating Relics a bit chancy if you aren’t ready for Hostile Tourists yet.