The value from village/smithy is that you enable another engine with it.
We may be having a terminology difference here. What I mean by "not another engine" is that there is no card drawer as good as or better than Smithy, and no source of +2 Action other than Village (except maybe Hamlet? I'd also potentially accept +2 Actions that don't give card advantage, though I think that's a slightly different question), and none of the "I'm an engine all by myself" cards like Laboratory or Alchemist.
If we want a full list of cards I'm excluding, I think this is pretty exhaustive:
Card Drawers: No Council Room, Torturer, Rabble, Nobles, Envoy, or Wharf. Maybe no Courtyard? Not sure.
+2 Actions: No Shanty Towns, Native Villages, Walled Villages, Fishing Villages, Mining Villages, Worker's Villages, Hamlets (maybe), Cities, Bazaars, Nobles (again!) or Festivals.
"All By Itself" Engine cards: No Minions, Laboratories, Alchemists, Hunting Parties, or maybe Scrying Pools.
A variation might be yes to Hamlets and Festivals.
Or, to put the whole thing a different way: I'm interested in decks which utilize Village/Smithy to draw a very large hand and have lots of Actions, and then plays whatever actions and treasure and such off of having done that. What I'm trying to exclude is "other ways to draw a very large hand" or "other ways to get lots of Actions," because, of course, we know that there are variations of "other ways to draw a very large hand" which are just in and of themselves strong.