are villagers/recruits generic or semi-unique?

[MiguelCairo]

are the villagers that you can recruit to your town or as fighters have names and unique stats/traits? or all the same? can you recruit villagers as fighters and visa versa?

[Ludi]

Only quest npcs are unique, others are randomly generated (names and stats).
So for example, first town has 2 carpenters with bad stats and even a negative trait. I would recruit one and another one will spawn with better stats. I'd recruit the new one and evict the first one to refund my renown.
Check all villagers and recruit the ones you like. I Prefer the ones with strength 4-6.

[MiguelCairo]

ok and do those stats improve and/or change? do villagers and expand on their own or are you in charge of everything?

[Misper]

They have unique traits but their stats will show different max levels based on the mix of possibilities.

[MiguelCairo]

Originally posted by Misper:

They have unique traits but their stats will show different max levels based on the mix of possibilities.

thank you!

[Ludi]

Originally posted by MiguelCairo:

ok and do those stats improve and/or change? do villagers and expand on their own or are you in charge of everything?

Villagers have a base level of an attribute and a max level to which they can level to.
They will level up when they fight, craft, build, research etc. You can buy skill books or "borrow" books from bandits.

Example, villager has strength of 3 and a maximum of 6.

[Fortigan]

Originally posted by Misper:

They have unique traits but their stats will show different max levels based on the mix of possibilities.

I personally like the idea of villagers having a variety of different skill levels, but I don't think their skill caps should be different (outside of unique traits). It's odd to think that a beggar will never have stats better than a child no matter how much time and effort you invest in improving them. They are still human and have human potential.

For those that argue over game balance/progression, you still need the higher tier villagers for their apprentice status, so reputation progression is still important. You also don't have to invest as much time and resources into improving the higher tier villagers. The incentive to progress would not vanish if every villager had a skill cap of 10. You need to liberate all the villages and finish key research anyway. If a person is willing to put the monumental time and resources into making a beggar into skilled warrior, you should let them.

[PHoenixOPHury]

Originally posted by Fortigan:

I personally like the idea of villagers having a variety of different skill levels, but I don't think their skill caps should be different (outside of unique traits). It's odd to think that a beggar will never have stats better than a child no matter how much time and effort you invest in improving them. They are still human and have human potential.

The lower the tier of villager the worse traits they will have like Dullard, Nearsighted, Pessimist, Slacker. Meaning even if you are to train them up to max attributes, it will take even longer and they still won’t be as good because of their bad traits. I think the higher attribute caps and better traits with higher tier villagers makes sense for balance and progression, even including the point of research. As you can train them up quickly enough and you can expel unwanted villagers for your renown back. Why would you want to keep a bad beggar with bad traits and low levels if you can expel them getting renown back. To get a villager for the same cost with good or great traits and higher caps while it could be a villager that unlocks research?

As you recruit more villagers the cost goes up but so does the amount of renown given back when you expel a villager. Meaning buying a beggar for 100 renown at the start of the game, later on when you’re at 15 villagers and they cost over 2,000 renown for villagers. Your beggar will be able to be expelled for over 2,000 renown back. Effectively enabling you to recruit a new villager immediately that is already trained up more, with higher max caps and better traits. Which completely solves your problem with beggars reaching a ceiling cap.

[Fortigan]

Originally posted by PHoenixOPHury:

The lower the tier of villager the worse traits they will have like Dullard, Nearsighted, Pessimist, Slacker. Meaning even if you are to train them up to max attributes, it will take even longer and they still won’t be as good because of their bad traits. I think the higher attribute caps and better traits with higher tier villagers makes sense for balance and progression, even including the point of research. As you can train them up quickly enough and you can expel unwanted villagers for your renown back. Why would you want to keep a bad beggar with bad traits and low levels if you can expel them getting renown back. To get a villager for the same cost with good or great traits and higher caps while it could be a villager that unlocks research?

As you recruit more villagers the cost goes up but so does the amount of renown given back when you expel a villager. Meaning buying a beggar for 100 renown at the start of the game, later on when you’re at 15 villagers and they cost over 2,000 renown for villagers. Your beggar will be able to be expelled for over 2,000 renown back. Effectively enabling you to recruit a new villager immediately that is already trained up more, with higher max caps and better traits. Which completely solves your problem with beggars reaching a ceiling cap.

It's like you went out of your way to completely ignore the topic I was talking about. My point was (outside of unique traits) every villager should have a skill cap of 10. I wasn't saying it would be better to train a beggar than recruit a better villager. Even the best villagers can have an extremely low cap on a skill. I had a 4 star carpenter with an agility cap of zero. My point was that the variation on skill caps should not exist. They should all be the same.

There should only be 3 variables with villagers:

• Starting stats
  
• Unique traits
  
• Apprenticeships

I've had to spend dozens of hours killing villagers so that a new one would spawn that might have enough strength cap to actually wear decent armor. I'm certain the devs did not intend for their players to mass murder villagers to cycle respawns with better stats.

[PHoenixOPHury]

I didn’t go out of my way to ignore it. I think you’re the only one having this huge of an issue with it where it’s such a big problem compared to anyone else’s play through. How many total villagers do you have? What’s the minimum renown cost from the cheapest villager you can get? As in a beggars cost from the village with the lowest # of recruited villagers. By day 45 I have 23 villagers and my cheapest ones are 2,000~ renown.

You have 7 villages to recruit over 25 total villagers from not including several quest characters which are a minimum of mid to high levels. With 3+ bellwright and 3+ protector level villagers at all 7 of the villages. If they have a low strength skill cap then they’re not meant to be a fighter and are meant to stay home at the village as a worker. If they have low strength but can still fight then make them an archer so they can still be safe in the back line. Otherwise they will get given high HP foods and a shield and just be a meat shield. With high HP food you can push your soldiers to have over 300 HP each.

If every villager has the same level caps then it means there is less variety between villagers when that is literally one of the main features of villagers is variety. Variety of looks, traits, skill caps and starting skills. The villager system is clearly emulating the Rimworld/Dwarf Fortress villager system with skills. Which has been done by several similar games at this point including now Bellwright. Not a single one of those games has all villagers with the same max level skill cap. All of those games have different max skill caps randomly generated for the villagers.

What level bandit camp or parties are you trying to fight where you need a huge army for one place unless you’re doing several in a row? How many guards do you use? How many soldiers do you field when you go to fight camps and parties?

[Ludi]

There are high level companions that you can recruit with endgame quests that are the best, the villagers are not meant to be that good. Village recruits are beginner and mid tear, you get access to better ones when you liberate the village, so there's the incentive.
To have a beggar level up with books to 10 skills total is just dumb and contra what the devs intended.

[Fortigan]

Originally posted by PHoenixOPHury:

I didn’t go out of my way to ignore it. I think you’re the only one having this huge of an issue with it where it’s such a big problem compared to anyone else’s play through. How many total villagers do you have? What’s the minimum renown cost from the cheapest villager you can get? As in a beggars cost from the village with the lowest # of recruited villagers. By day 45 I have 23 villagers and my cheapest ones are 2,000~ renown.

You have 7 villages to recruit over 25 total villagers from not including several quest characters which are a minimum of mid to high levels. With 3+ bellwright and 3+ protector level villagers at all 7 of the villages. If they have a low strength skill cap then they’re not meant to be a fighter and are meant to stay home at the village as a worker. If they have low strength but can still fight then make them an archer so they can still be safe in the back line. Otherwise they will get given high HP foods and a shield and just be a meat shield. With high HP food you can push your soldiers to have over 300 HP each.

If every villager has the same level caps then it means there is less variety between villagers when that is literally one of the main features of villagers is variety. Variety of looks, traits, skill caps and starting skills. The villager system is clearly emulating the Rimworld/Dwarf Fortress villager system with skills. Which has been done by several similar games at this point including now Bellwright. Not a single one of those games has all villagers with the same max level skill cap. All of those games have different max skill caps randomly generated for the villagers.

What level bandit camp or parties are you trying to fight where you need a huge army for one place unless you’re doing several in a row? How many guards do you use? How many soldiers do you field when you go to fight camps and parties?

Lets ignore the beggar. I was just using an extreme example. I've never actually recruited one. I'm not having a "problem", I'm pointing out something unrealistic that breaks immersion and negatively impacts gameplay. I currently have 36 villagers, I'm the bellwright of 5 towns, and I'm trying to take on the noble. I have a few hundred hours in the game. But where I am at in my current game is irrelevant to the topic.

We don't need arbitrary skill caps to create variety in the villagers. Those caps are already influenced by unique traits. I'd rather see more of those instead. At least with unique traits there is a reason behind the limitation and they are not so extreme (Jimmy got hit in the head too many times as a child and is now a dullard that can't research well. Paul is nearsighted so he can't be good at archery). Blacksmith Bill is not a cripple, so there is no reason why his strength could not one day be higher than 4. Leave all the base skill caps at 10 and use the traits for variation. That makes for much better individuality than an arbitrary number and prevents extreme cases where even top tier villagers can have caps at zero.

Stat balance is another issue. Basically anyone with low agility sucks, because they are physically slower. Can't keep up when marching and lower overall productivity in any jobs. Strength limits the gear you can use, dramatically affects damage, and boosts your HP and Stam. Those two stats are vastly more important than any other one by a huge margin. You can get by with relatively low combat stats as long as you have decent strength and agility. You can use better gear, do more damage, have more health, and you are fast enough to not get outmaneuvered.

Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on the game. I'm really enjoying it and they have made a lot of progress since EA launch. I'm just offering constructive feedback.

[tamu1997]

I mean the reality is that different people DO have different limits.

[Fortigan]

Originally posted by tamu1997:

I mean the reality is that different people DO have different limits.

Which is why the traits exist. They provide a minor cap adjustment. If you have 2 real world professional runners, yes one can be faster than the other, but they wont vary by wide margins unless one of them has some kind of physical limitation (trait. shorter or smaller lung capacity etc). The nearsighted trait is a great example. That character will never be as good at archery. We don't need arbitrary limitations beyond traits. It leads to unintended player actions, such as hording your books till late game or killing off villagers that had bad RNG to get new ones.

[tamu1997]

Originally posted by Fortigan:

Originally posted by tamu1997:

I mean the reality is that different people DO have different limits.

Which is why the traits exist. They provide a minor cap adjustment. If you have 2 real world professional runners, yes one can be faster than the other, but they wont vary by wide margins unless one of them has some kind of physical limitation (trait. shorter or smaller lung capacity etc). The nearsighted trait is a great example. That character will never be as good at archery. We don't need arbitrary limitations beyond traits. It leads to unintended player actions, such as hording your books till late game or killing off villagers that had bad RNG to get new ones.

unless we start having tons of traits which would then really be arbitray, people are not as "you can be anything you want" as removing the caps would make it. I guess maybe before release it could just a be an option to turn off the caps. /shrug

[Fortigan]

Originally posted by tamu1997:

Originally posted by Fortigan:

Which is why the traits exist. They provide a minor cap adjustment. If you have 2 real world professional runners, yes one can be faster than the other, but they wont vary by wide margins unless one of them has some kind of physical limitation (trait. shorter or smaller lung capacity etc). The nearsighted trait is a great example. That character will never be as good at archery. We don't need arbitrary limitations beyond traits. It leads to unintended player actions, such as hording your books till late game or killing off villagers that had bad RNG to get new ones.

unless we start having tons of traits which would then really be arbitray, people are not as "you can be anything you want" as removing the caps would make it. I guess maybe before release it could just a be an option to turn off the caps. /shrug

Nah, more traits certainly wouldn't be more arbitrary than a random number between 10 and 0. You wouldn't get those extremes and at least there would be a character reason behind it.

I'd even be happy with a compromise, so that the range couldn't be so extreme. Like, if the minimum a cap could be was higher with each villager rank. The RNG anywhere between 10 and 0 is silly. The way it works currently is with a point pool that gets randomly divided. Better villagers have more points. A villager could have multiple 10's and multiple 0's at the same time.