I don't know if this is new or if I just didn't notice it before. I had the focus on a villager who apparently was just finishing the excersize routine and the message came up that the villager gained building skill. Since I wasn't quite sure what I saw, I watched another villager who was in the middle of the 'excersizing' behavior and at the end they gained building skill.

It's not a controllable behavior since they'll only start on their own and I'm not sure how much xp they actually get per routine. So I don't know how efficient it is over the long run compared to fixing up huts or polishing the temple.

Just thought I'd put this out there as I thought it was pretty neat.

Edit: I didn't really think it was that much of a spoiler, but thanks I guess.

The exercising behavior was added in VV2, and it has produced building skill ever since.

Exercising brings one increase in buildings skills each time a villager successfully completes a session of exercise. Since it involves the peep running about carrying rocks, etc., it takes longer to complete than a more usual building behaviour like fixing huts or polishing the statue. Because the increase in building skill for the time taken is negligible, and it is villager-initiated, it doesn't normally contribute greatly to a villager's skill, but is better than nothing.

LOL, I've never noticed it producing building skill then, or maybe forgot about it ><

In at least one previous game you were able to initiate exercising. In VV5 it's just a random behavior they choose to do. So, it's not too useful, and would have been much more useful if those pesky untrained teenagers would do it sometime (I've never seen them do it).

It also seems to me that fixing huts is a slightly faster way to build skill than polishing the statue, because it seems like it takes less time to complete the fixing action, but it could be my imagination.

You are right, there are NEVER enough runners. Those that start the game without at least two are way behind the eight ball!

VV4 (could been 3) there was potion (and trophy for completing it)) which made villagers to exercise.

my villagers who polish statue (devotees) are quite often mastered building and devotion when they reach 18 just polishing statue.

Polishing the statue does have the advantage of increasing god points, whereas fixing the huts just increases the builders' skill. I'll drag most builders away from fixing the huts and put them on polishing duties because of this.

I started my 4th tribe and found that IF you COMPLETE Spiritual tech 1ST, you get the 3rd hut, BESIDES the loving, school,clothing, and 2 of the 1st huts. So IN ALL, you get 6 huts to BUILD. And when you COMPLETE Spiritual tech first, you can FINISH the statue. AND I put ALL my peeps on devotion, like I had seen in another post, and have NOW 2 Masters AND the rest Adept.
Now I'm going to put my Master Devotee's on parenting and HOPING I can get that skill Mastered. The other skills will be a BREEZE to get AFTER I get the parenting skill Mastered.

Happy Villaging in Village land.

PS. I FORGOT to mention when posted this earlier, when selecting peeps, in 2 I selected HIGH Devotion skills and the rest as Devotion with SOME skill.