I’m not talking about the names or models or their unique traits. These can all stay the same as they are now. I just think they should be considered the same unit by the game mechanics. Just like merchants and yoruks are basically settlers with a shadow tech.
Maybe the settler/villager distinction was meant to separate “colonial civs” from “natives”, but that theme was long ago and with more regions introduced it is no longer needed.
Most of the time a civ would not access the other unit, but there are exceptions:
- You rescue settlers from treasure on most maps. However, on some African maps these are villagers.
- The cherokee syllabary tech grants you settlers.
- There are multiple instances that the rescued villager/settler either turn into the villager/settler of your civ, or simply a skin change yet still considered as a different unit. It’s quite irregular.
In either case, you may not be able to double click and select all your villagers/settlers.
On the other hand I don’t think making them different units would add anything to the gameplay. So it only causes some confusions.
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It was sort of similar for 4 villager shipment from Ottoman consulate, but they later changed it to 4 Hindu Villagers. As is the civs own villagers.
you always can, the only situations where you cant are really niche special vils like those from the Lenape native which have separate build limits
the villager you get from for example aztec team shipment is always selectable with your units
as for the visual updates to units and treasures those are done by code when the unit is spawned from the treasure rather then set.
like in the filewise the units are effectively identical in stats and abilities
Some civilisations have different villagers like the French that are better then generic Settlers.
But with the exception of that most villagers are practically identical.
You can’t hunt with rescued Settlers as Japanese or kill cows with them as Indians anyway.
Maybe there should be a generic tressure villager that doesn’t count to the build limit nor population limit and has a design that is automatically based on the map you play on.
They would always be called rescued villager.
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If I remember correctly, originally, the main(or only) difference between the two is that villagers were able to build town centers, since usually the Warchief and Monk were incentivized to be fighting with your army, vs euro civs where the explorer was thought to be more of a scout unit, and so he needed to be the one to establish additional town centers, Settlers couldn’t build them by default. In DE tho all Settlers can now build town centers so the units other than name/skin are basically the exact same.
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yeah the only thing that would make unifying all the vils complicated is what they can build and collect which might need some rethinking how the system works
right now for example as an african civ if you get the lenape native vil they cant build most things or go on fields, same with rescued cdbs