The only way for them to get them is to win a fight as far as I know. I am not sure if it is possible to make a mod that would randomly hand out ranks or the like. It's not within my knowledge at the moment either, as I focus solely on units.

There is definitely a great complexity behind that, but it would make so much sense with reward structures for example, or as the game progresses, you reach round 80 and all neutrals are gold-ish, much more of a challange

i want to try to do this.. i might need help i wonder if mod devs can pm answers to questions if i get stuck (i will)

I do find it strange that all neutrals and all reward units are without ranks, even though for rewards ones you can see their ranks in reward selection screen. Is this something Triumph made at first but then ditched somewhere mid-development?

Normally neutral units can gain XP and rank up from battles, but normally they don't survive to fight a second time. And getting to gold would be soooo slow and unlikely.

Was thinking, heroes gain a small amount of XP every round, maybe something like this can be implemented for neutral units also..? So they all start with no XP but by turn 50 they get to a silver or gold..

just make an invisible ai hero with no move points that looks weak so neutrals attack it and it looses? i cant make mods on linux.. or i would have tried.. maybe a town that produces random units that roam map and adds gold medal to them.. but they have low moral or some kind of defector status that rejects them from town ownership idk?

must be a way around it..

also i wish somone would make a mod to replace settler with a settler that requires a palace and needs 1000 gold upkeep / turn so that city founding is a gradual spread