2014, New player questions

I already expressed my support for freedom of harvesting so my suggestion is to harvest as much as you want (provided you don't overharvest) but if the patch is being harvested by someone else wait till they are finished.

A few more things to keep in mind:

Herbs are regenerated to the max available on each spot at midnight (game time). So if you scout the patch shortly after midnight you will know how many herbs are there.

This is important to know because if herbs are overharvested (e.g. if you send 10 herbalists on a patch with 9 herbs) they will disappear forever from that spot.

I am also a self-appointed "environmental guard" meaning I protect the rare herbs patch closest to my city by scouting every time I see other people harvesting it (I advise you to do the same). If I ever see too many harvesters there, I am ready to bump them off and even kill them (if I don't have any harvesting units to bump them with) but luckily this has never happened.

Considering the size of your neighbours they will not be interested to the rare herbs for a long time, if ever. Chances are they will either abandon the account or tenaril to a new location.

If any of them decides to stay in the area I think you should approach them not to ask permission but to encourage them to agree to a shared use of the resource.

If they claim rights on it because of vicinity you could claim precedence, since you were there first. My personal opinion is that natural resources belong to everybody so they should be shared.

This is a petitioned issue and has been an issue for well over a year.

What you queue up for production is rarely what you will make.  Mind you, more often than not you will produce more than you actually queue up.  

Faction standings cannot be changed at this time.

2) With regard to the folks who send more than a new player's storage can actually hold, I have never been able to fathom why they thought that was a good thing.  They may feel it's helpful, but more often it is just annoying for the new player.  Probably it reflects the fact that it's been a long time since they were a new player themselves and can't put themselves in your shoes.  My advice would be to make the best use of whatever is incoming that you can, consistent with your own goals.  Play your own game.

3)  If you don't have any rare herbs or minerals around you or if they are all claimed, there is little point to building a herbalists guild or a miners guild.  A skinners guild can be handy once you have a small army and start killing stuff, or if there are a lot of unclaimed animal parts left lying around your area.  Cotters are cheap and very useful.  Building a trade office and merchants guild can be useful to build a trader and take advantage of safe storage in hubs.  I wouldn't recommend upgrading them very far unless you plan to be very active in hub trade.  (Upgrading merchants guild beyond level 1 seems pretty pointless for all but perhaps the top 1% of traders.)