Civilian

Civilians are an unorganized neutral faction in Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction and Mercenaries 2: World in Flames.

Overview
Civilians are a broad category of noncombatants including the innocent denizens of North Korea, as well as war reporters and Allied Nations aid workers. Civilians in Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction mostly consist of women and elderly because many of the men are part of the Korean People's Army. Civilians in Mercenaries 2: World in Flames feature a broader representation Venezuela's population, though war reporters and aid workers no longer appear. Neither games feature children or teenagers in any capacity as part of the game world.

Civilians are generally unaffiliated with any other faction. Occasionally civilian workers can be found around North Korean troops, including Allied Nations aid workers, which remain neutral despite the Allied Nations actively hunting down North Korea's leadership. As unarmed noncombatants, there is no reason to ever harm civilians, and doing so will result in a $10,000 penalty to bribe the media and stave off bad press for Executive Operations or the Private Military Company. In Mercenaries civilian casualties will also upset the Allied Nations, Chinese, and South Koreans, though the Russian Mafia does not care.

Unlike every other faction, Civilians have no geopolitical ambitions and have a very limited role in the conflict. A wealthy man in Unsan Village hires the Mercenary to kill a gang of drug dealers plaguing his community. In 'Two Degrees of Separation', a local community leader is willing to sell out the Queen of Spades to the Chinese in the hopes of bringing peace to his village. In 'Humanitarian Efforts' the Allied Nations hire the Mercenary to deliver vaccines to a refugee camp blockaded by the People's Liberation Army.

Tactics
Because Civilians are neutral to all factions and vehicles so prevalent, the civilian disguise one of the strongest in the game despite all civilian vehicles being unarmed and unarmored. The only place a civilian disguise will fail is when trespassing on a faction's exclusive territory, or driving too close to an Officer and being discovered. In Mercenaries 2 the disguise is much less powerful due to the common soldier's ability to see through it given enough time.