I like the idea of being able to form a group of 'friends' other than those neighbours you have discovered and have them available to trade with and also swap 'assistance' for mutual benefit.
Whether this is done by forming alliances/guilds/clans where the group as a whole benefits each other or we are all able to form separate individual friendship groups.
I think it will depend on how the game is going to move forward i.e: are we eventually going to have to fight each other as in Forge of Empires Guild v's Guild wars, or be able to attack and plunder goods from our neighbours ?
And how do these alliances work Elf only, Human only or mixed race ?
I think it is also important even from this early stage in the game to know who is assisting us with our game so strong alliances can begin to be formed.
In beta we are informed of who has visited and given 'assistance' to our cultural buildings etc but if you do a trade with someone you are NOT informed of who took the trade.
I feel this is a poor oversight as I do my best to trade with those neighbours that visit me regularly but they don't know this
