i don't know if anyone else has had this problem or whether there is a limit to how many elders you can have. i have 50 elders and two more villagers have mastered 3 skills, one is on his way of mastering 4 skills, yet neither have got an elder totem. i thought it was just a glitch with the first one but now i have the same with a second one. because i am so bored having solved all the puzzles in two villages i thought i would go for as many elders as i could, so if its a waste of time can someone let me know thanks.

That is one of the most-discussed "features" of VV2, hotly debated as to whether or not there should be a limit. There are legitimate ways to get more than 50, but not by training your villagers, once you hit the limit. It involves luck and events.

got it

Hey crazyfish. If you are so very bored, why don't you try play another game, and then start this one over, when you have forgotten some of the puzzles solvings? Just a suggestion.

all apart from a few of my elders have been trained in 3 skills legitimately, the odd few got one skill from the gong, but the greater majority have trained. i have 5 more villagers who have mastered 3 skills and only one of them got one skill from the gong. it seems unfair that you spend the time training up your villagers to elder status and be limited to a specific number, just what else is there to do with the game when you reach that stage. i disagree that you can't get more than 50 by training your villagers because i have done it, i now have 56 in total who have completed 3 skills, i don't know if you are inferring that i am cheating and i really hope you are not, because i assure you i have trained my villagers using only legitimate means.

thanks for the suggestion kamma, but i have already done that and the aim of my other villages was to train as many villagers as i could to be elders, that was my challenge and am disappointed that the game limits how many we can have. in fact i started doing that with my original village but now it seems i am limited i don't see the point.

I was not at all implying that you are cheating. What I was trying to say is that, once you reach 50 elders (complete with totems), regardless of whether they attained Esteemed Elder status through training, the gong, or Island Events, you can no longer produce an Esteemed Elder by training your villagers to master 3 skills. After the 50-elder limit, the only way to produce an Esteemed Elder is through an event of some sort (and that's not cheating, either, as long as the events were not manipulated through means that I won't divulge here). Unlimited villagers can be trained to master 3 or more skills (and many people dress them all in special clothing to distinguish them, since they don't all have the Esteemed Elder title). Sorry for the misunderstanding.

For some things in the game I see a point, for others not. I guess this varies from player to player. My own trouble is that I can't force myself to use the gong, when it can mean that some of my poor little villagers might die - sigh! I like the positive outfall/outfalls but not the negatve. This doesn't nessesarily mean it's something bad. I guess somebody likes the thrill about it. Bottom line: We can't decide, how the developers want to game to be.

I think the limit of 50 Elders is a programming problem. To store the fact that potentially hundreds of villagers have become Elders would maybe take up too much memory and quite likely slow the game down, or even crash it. There's a similar seemingly arbitrary limit on displaying villager's parents in their details screen; when they get to 14 the names of the parents no longer become available, and when they reach 18 the parents' images disappear, too. The other limit, of course, is on the maximum population, and I suspect similar issues are involved there.

I felt badly at first that the 51st tribesman couldnt be an elder. So I started dressing them in certain ways. Now I dress them all in certain ways once them just become elderly and put them on healing (which they arent trained)

Some things I do with my large ongoing tribe to add interest

Have a day of rest. Put all villagers on a skill they have no bar in. Over half the villagers enjoyed playing in the pond or relaxing at the beach!

A parent day. Set all 18 and over on parenting. Since I'm at maxed population there were only six babies made (as elderly died off :()

Make a energy stew, pause the game and drop every single villager on the stew then unpause it.

Heck, I have fun just trying to find the kid that's 'it' when the 35 plus rugrats play tag, which they do a lot!:)