Non-panicked civilians should have the ability to run away and find better cover, and once they spot reinforcements, they should move in the direction of rescue. It does not make sense to me that civilians just sit still in one place while getting attacked turn after turn until they die.

This will not be included in the next patch. We are aiming to include it in the second bigger patch from now.

It is the great idea. However remove will point loses for killed allied heaven defenders. Or at least minimalize lose of WP to 1 point otherwise this missions result in immidiately panicking squad.

Would be awesome!!!

Near the end of the Disciples Campaign there are friendly AI fighters. I don't know why that's ok in that story mission and not other missions.

I would love to see this as something that evolves over time or based on military strength. For example a faction with a military power of 3 might just have 4 civs with pistols and 4 panicky ones you still need to rescue manually but one with 12 might have 6 fully armored guys with ARs and a heavy . 18+ will have a parked vehicle for you to use at no soldier cost to your drop but like the beta you have to run a guy over to it to take it over (or a tech with manual control ability can grab it at a distance)

Then you have research or shared research to upgrade civilians / defenders as well - maybe you have some special research where you spend 500 resource and 200 tech but when you research it all factions your 50% or better with get +2 military strength (+4 if they are with operational range of one of your bases) This way it shows a more symbiotic relation with the factions where they are getting something from you just as you are getting benefits from them .

Late game this also allows you to have to do less fights since your advancing the military strength that means more havens that can defend themselves.

This can also tie into Nest where each nest has a military strength it can send out that grows over time so you can look at nest and know how much of priority they are

I agree this would be great, most points have already been laid out below but I would like to personally re-up that:

1) In order for this to remain balanced, enemy strength on haven defense missions would need to be increased

2) Enemy AI speed (or at least turn animation) would need to be sped up so that AI turns don't take forever

3) Your soldiers shouldn't lose WP (or should only lose 1 WP) when an allied soldier dies, since otherwise the AI getting itself into stupid situations could lead to the player being ineffective for most of the mission through no fault of their own