A statement from the Dwarven Lords...

I personally respect other peoples areas and am easy to get along with.
But realistically, people are people and there will be conflict, and after all this is a game,
everyone is trying to be best.  Good luck to all

I disagree.  I think there is enough for everyone if we choose to use it wisely.  There may be people who believe it is more fun to have lots of conflict, and that's another reason to have more conflict.  But saying there will be more conflict because somehow there isn't "enough" lacks logical foundation.  It's about people making choices.  I personally hope that people will choose to respect other people's choices to the greatest degree possible.

Its best to play the game the way it is built today.. (or how ever it goes.) I agree, but that is stupid to do when you should always be planning ahead.

The 10square rule is there to not only protect the person that was there first, but to protect the player that moved there. If Alliance walls come into play, would you want one of your towns stuck inside that alliance wall? (Wont come out this year, probably not even by Christmas next year-maybe with alot of luck with pathfind?) What if crafting adds new sov, makes sov cheaper, makes new kinds of sov you can claim? Stuff like this can and most likely will happen later on. Think if your less then 10 squares away, do you want your town next to a town that is stronger then you?

Play the game the way its built today. Yet if you don't plan for the advancements do not cry when your city evidently gets siege off the map.

Alliance have the 10 square rule to keep problems from occurring.  Plus its just less explaining.

But if the squares in the middle of distance 10 are ordinary squares, without any unique bonus from both POVs, your specific argument for a general 10sq claim does not hold.

"But if" means a conditional clause, which completely short-circuits any arguments regarding a general rule.  Exceptions abound, and negotiating to take advantage of them is simple.  Coming up with public rules that somehow carefully reserve only the bare minimum that a person might want with consideration of the circumstances is beyond infeasible.  "Don't come within 10 squares without working out an agreement" wraps all that complexity in a simple package with a nice little bow.  Frankly, this is really like saying the opposite--that "I promise not to be bothered by your arrival, even if it's unannounced, so long as this margin of breathing room is maintained.

At least one third of all land squares don't really qualify as "normal," in the sense that they have production bonuses or >5 plots for some resource.  When you have a well-developed city and fully understand the economic tradeoffs, you will want exactly 20 sovereign claims (and typically no more only because we're limited to 20 sovereign structures).  Depending on what you're attempting to accomplish at the moment, how you're specializing the city, and how quickly you want to be able to react to changing needs, it is feasible to maintain up to 30 sovereign claims all the time.  (Example: currently focused on max livestock production, then war starts.  You delete 10 lvl 1 livestock-boosting structures from their optimal locations and immediately build 10 infantry-boosting structures on the other previously unused lvl 1 claims which have better infantry bonuses).  I don't think many will go that route, but it's a valid strategy.

Ultimately, it's true that the vast majority of cases under current conditions will not have a problem when cities are as close as 7-8 tiles away.  But that could change tomorrow, and undoing a 3-month exodus+rebuild is a hell of a price to pay for lack of foresight--especially if it was someone else's foresight that fell so short as to stunt your potential.

As a newbie I thought the 10 square "rule" was so that one had room for more towns in that area if so desired - claiming outlying Sov squares was the last thing on my mind.