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.