I think civilian in its current form is bad because it isn't fun, conducive to gameplay or reprentative of ROE IRL.
IMO the system needs a whole redesign.
1st, remove civilian as a spawn kit. There should be 12 civilian kits spawn at the mosque, these would have no medic bag (not trained), but around 10 field dressing each, along with grapple hook, shovel and binocs (In the future a camcorder should be used, this is to DIFFERENTIATE the kit so that it can 1) be used for recon 2) show its a civi to help keep it alive)
2nd, Caches should spawn field dressings, 1 every 5 seconds or so. That way you can flee to a cache to heal if needed. (parody of retreating to a safehouse, you can choose to die rather than lead the enemy to the safehouse

)
3rd, Severe penalities placed on Bluefor for killing civilians that aren't overtly helping the enemy (i.e. haven't healed in 2 mins) This will not result in human shields everywhere since the civis are a limited kit you have to find. Penalties should be 3/4 civi kills = courts martial, each civi kill = extra 60seconds spawn. 2 civi kills = kill count reset.
4th, Civis cannot pick up weapons or operate weapons.
and a side note, unarmed vehicles that have been idle for 3 mins or so should reward those that destroy them with long spawntimes.