Training The Peaceful Villagers / Video Games

• A lot of strategy games start out this way, usually as the tutorial.
• You had to do this in Jagged Alliance 2 if you wanted to keep Deidranna from re-taking any liberated towns. the unofficial v1.13 update makes them a lot more dangerous.
• In Pikmin, the titular creatures are nigh-extinct until Captain Olimar assembles them and exploits their sheer numbers and abilities. When he takes off, the Pikmin start fending for themselves. By the time the sequel came around, they are found to be, while not numerous, in much better shape than before, managing to survive on their own.
• In Roadwar 2000, your gang can recruit the starving "Needy" people, who are hands down the most worthless of all the post-apocalypse city wanderers who can possibly join you... but with a good drill sergeant, you can promote these recruits into worthy gang members after only a few firefights or road battles to harden them.
• The Wild West chapter of Live A Live mostly features The Sundown Kid (the hero) and his rival/partner Mad Dog searching the town for items to give to the peaceful townfolks to use as traps (ranging from stuff like dynamite, ropes, carrots, horse dung, and a naughty poster), in order to decimate the villain gang.
• In Dragon Ball Online, the Z-Fighters managed to do this for humanity in The Unmasqued World. After Gohan wrote a book reintroducing Ki Manipulation to the general public, Trunks and Goten started a swordsmanship school. As a result, when the Frieza Force performs a full-scale Alien Invasion of Earth 40 years after the events of Dragon Ball Z humanity is able to defend itself for once.
• In Fallout 3, you can help the population of Big Town defend themselves from Super Mutants with guns, robots, mines, or even just hiding inside depending on what skills you have. However, you may find it more amusing to leave them to die.
• Fallout: New Vegas:
  • Deconstructed in the DLC Honest Hearts, where the player must choose to help a pacifist tribe called the Sorrows, either by teaching them to fight back or help them escape and settle elsewhere. Daniel, the Mormon missionary who advocates resettlement, worries that training them will lead to the loss of the Sorrows' innocence and calls you out if you choose to do so. If you help them by fighting, the epilogue reveals they end up becoming aggressive Proud Warrior Race Guys that start waging wars with other tribes. The other option is not better, however, since the Sorrows lose their homeland with it and the epilogue shows that Daniel himself felt doubtful if it really was the right choice. Or you can Take a Third Option by convince Joshua to spare Salt-Upon-Wounds, indirectly teaching the Sorrows about mercy and tempering their newfound aggressivity.
  • It's also played straight in the early quest "Ghost Town Gunfight" where you form an impromptu militia of Goodsprings townsfolk to fight Joe Cobb and his small group of Powdergangers. The best thing you can do is get Trudy to round up the townsfolk, get dynamite from Easy Pete, armour from Chet, and meds from Doc Mitchell. This allows the town to beat the gang. If you take the opposing quest they'll still put up a spirited fight, but the chips fall against them this time.
• In Fallout 4, you're expected to build defenses for your settlements and arm your settlers in order to protect them against raids by Raiders, Super Mutants, Gunners, and whatever else the Wasteland decides to throw at you. The ironic thing is that the player (and arena fights in the Wasteland Workshop DLC) is the only thing in the game that can kill settlers.
• In Mount & Blade, villages may ask you to help teach them how to fight better to fend off bandit attacks. You had to drill them, beat up several of the recruits, and then fight off an attack after completion. Their relation with you improves as a result.
  • The opinion of their respective lords, however, worsens.
• The entire point of Battle Realms. Unlike most other Real-Time Strategy games, you can not actually purchase new units (aside from Heroes). Instead, you train the worker units (aka Peasants) into different schools to get the units you want. Training them again in one of the remaining schools mixes their education and makes them into different units; and so on.
• The village of Redcliffe in Dragon Age: Origins is besieged by The Undead. You can choose to help the villagers defend themselves by convincing their drunk-off-his-ass blacksmith to supply them with new armor and weapons, persuade/coerce the somewhat shady dwarven warrior Dwyn and his thugs to fight, offer an Elvish archer spying on Redcliffe for Loghain mercy in exchange for his help, convince Lloyd the bartender through threat or persuasion to offer the militia free ale and/or make him fight too, find oil that can be used to set a trap at the village entrance, and provide the Knights of Redcliffe with amulets from the local Chantry that help boost their morale. Of course even with all of this, they still won't stand a chance without you and your party fighting alongside them. If you don't want to go to all of this trouble, you can also just leave them to the hungry zombie horde.
• You can help the settlement on Dantooine in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords fight off a group of mercenaries by recruiting new blood for the militia, repairing their droids and turrets, shoring up the defenses with mines, and giving a Rousing Speech. And, if you've got the Restored Content, take part in an epic siege battle... or you could sell out to the mercenaries, sabotage the defenses, and get paid a lot more.
• Human players in Warcraft III can convert their peasants into militia in an emergency. They turn back into normal peasants after a while, though.
• If Shepard has the 'War Hero' background in Mass Effect, s/he (at 22 years old) rallied the civilian colonists of Elysium against a slaver attack. When the defenses fell, Shepard single-handedly held a position for several hours until reinforcements arrived.
• In Scribblenauts Unlimited, the Starite quest in Abjad Dunes requires you to train and fortify a small desert village to protect against invading Desert Bandits.
• In Guild Wars 2, there's a quest where you help build weapons and train villagers to fight the Forged. "Help X train" is a pretty common quest format in the game, although usually you're helping out other armed groups.