Villager (Age of Empires III)

The Villager is the main resource gatherer for all expansion pack civilizations in Age of Empires III.

Overview
Villagers are relatively inexpensive but fragile. They are not meant for combat, but will fire weak muskets to defend themselves and others. Villagers can be used to collect Treasures. Each civilization has a limit to the number of villagers they can have at once. Villagers pay for themselves rather quickly, and the longer an individual villager is alive, the more he contributes to the overall wealth of a given colony. Some Civilizations may receive Shipments of extra villagers from the Home City, while others have to rely solely on producing them from the Town Center in the New World. They can also be found as Treasures around the map. With Estates-card, the British can train villagers from Manors. They can also be garrisoned inside Town Centers and Towers to better attack invading enemies.

However, if villagers are put into combat, the best way to kill an enemy is using melee. As melee damage is higher than ranged in this unit, it is better to have a close combat with the enemy.

Tasks
Villagers can be assigned with the following tasks:

Villagers are the ones that build most of the buildings given the right amount of resources, space and right Age.

Villagers can gather food from berry bushes and hunt wild animals. When they run out, villagers may then be tasked to a Mill where working there will generate more Food. Food can also be gathered from Livestock.

Assigning on trees will have villagers gather wood which can be found aplenty and rarely runs out.

Coin can be gathered from Mines and assigning villagers to work on Plantations will generate Coin, similary to a Mill.

When resource shipments arrive, they do so in the form of Crates (food), Cords (wood), and Chests (coin) at the assinged shipment point, which usually is Town Center, but can be changed to certain other units and buidlings. They must be unpacked by a villager in order to add them to your resources.

Similary to Heroes and Explorers, villagers may also collect Treasures.

Trivia

 * Settlers come in the forms of men and women and the gender is randomly decided upon being trained from Town Center.