Currently, missions with "civilians" can be a little odd, if the mission is meant specifically for protecting someone, as the ai leaves things to be desired in terms of following orders. This makes sense for civilians in a terror mission, but doesn't work for more select missions.
I was wondering about, if you are for instance protecting a vip, if you could instead of having civilian ai, have a xcom unit assigned just for that map, that you control like troops, but are still in charge of protecting. Could work well for extraction missions, or protecting a vip a lot better than randomly running around. Especially if they are treated as a civilian if they live or die, as "loot" or something, and add some variety. Especially if a mission it was critical to rescue a vip, and the rest of the force was expendable.
But such missions would require the map giving you such a unit on arrival.
