Villager (Age of Empires III)

The Villager is the main resource gatherer for Native American and Asian civilizations in Age of Empires III, equivalent to the European Settler.

Overview
Villagers are relatively inexpensive but fragile. They are not meant for combat, but will fire weak weapons to defend themselves and others. 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/she 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.

Villagers can also be garrisoned inside Town Centers, Outposts, War Huts, and Castles to better attack invading enemies.

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.

Like Settlers, a villager's gender is randomly decided upon being trained from Town Center. Even though female villagers have slower animations for chopping Wood and Coin, the actual amount of resources that they gather does not vary by gender.

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 Livestock (except for Japanese and Indian villagers), and hunting wild animals (except for Japanese villagers). When they run out, villagers may then be tasked to a Farm or Rice Paddy (if set to produce Food) where working there will generate more Food.
 * 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 or Rice Paddies (if set to produce Coin).
 * When resource shipments arrive, they do so in the form of Crate(s) of Food, Cords of Wood and Chest(s) of Coin at the assigned shipment point, which is usually the Town Center, but can be changed to certain other units and buildings. They must be unpacked by a villager in order to add them to your resources.
 * Similarly to Heroes, Explorers, War Chiefs and Monks, villagers may also collect Treasures.

Home City cards
As the Villager is exclusive to Native American and Asian civilizations, only European civilizations' TEAM cards that affects them are listed here. {| class="wikitable collapsible collapsed" style="width:100%;" ! sab="1148" | Click for a list of related Home City cards
 * - sab="1147"
 * - sab="1149"
 * sab="1150" |
 * Yellow : Shipment that costs Coin
 * Green : TEAM Shipment that is sent to each player in a team

Japanese
White : Shipment that can be sent only ONCE

Indians
Brown : Shipment that costs Wood
 * }

Native Americans
"Highly industrious and loyal to a fault, the Villager lives to work for you. Whether it's chopping down the seventeen thousandth tree, scurrying across the map to a distant pile of silver ore, or endlessly toiling away at a mill, the Villager is ready to happily tackle any tedious task. The Villager’s hobbies include running away from enemy soldiers, being thrown into the river by enemy cannon fire, and crochet."

Asians
"Highly industrious and loyal to a fault, the Villager lives to work for you. Whether it's chopping down the seventeen thousandth tree, scurrying across the map to a distant pile of silver ore, or endlessly toiling away at a mill, the Villager is ready to tackle any tedious task. The Villager’s hobbies include running away from enemy soldiers, being thrown into the river by enemy cannon fire, and screaming—a lot of screaming."