You may no longer select multiple answers as this is easily exploitable. 

i would say this is not something you can decide on a poll in a forum.

things are more complex than just those options you give. i dare to say, it's pointless. 

@Sugarfree:

For example, if a res square is 5 from another player, and if you know they aren't harvesting from it, then heading in and responsibly harvesting would seem entirely reasonable. However, if they are harvesting, the deliberately bumping would seem rude, camping on it would seem obnoxious, and harvesting to destruction would seem outright aggressive.

In the last couple of weeks I'm aware (as, for my sins, I have "Diplomat" in my alliance role) of around twenty instances of people harvesting within 5 or 10 of a city:

* In a couple of cases I only know because we got a "I'm harvesting here, but tell me if you'd rather I didn't email".

* In half the remaining cases, nobody much cared.

* In the cases where it was an issue, almost all cases were resolved by an email saying "err, you don't really have a claim to that - what are you planning?" - in these cases a quick discussion led to an amicable agreement (generally in favour of whoever is closer, but sometimes with more complex arrangements based on who is actually going to invest in gatherer units.)

* In one case, we sent the usual friendly email, and got in return a "rah! I will fight for that square, even tho it's miles from me!" reply.

* In one case, someone just sent in troops.

So, in summary...

I'm seeing lots of cases where harvesting is occurring close to towns, but generally people are being reasonable about it.

There is nothing in this new game feature that forces people to behave like jerks. If a minority do choose to be aggressive, then that's exactly what it is - their choice. It's not an inevitable function of the game.

The best way to deal with this, IMHO, is simply to continue to behave reasonably, rather than to expect any hard and fast rule to be adopted.

The question for "the community" may not be "what should the rule be?", but "what (if anything) do we do about the jerks?"

My thoughts exactly, this should be a choice on the poll.

It also depends on the goods:  In a bumping contest for traditional resources it can be a goal to bump all vans of the opposition, even on foreign sov.  But my last all out bumping contest was months ago, it's too annoying to bump innocent third parties, and send them vans with what they tried to get as apology.

For new trade v2 resources under bumping rules the nearer town typically wins in a bumping contest, same idea as for trade v1 resources.  And unlike caravans cotters and gathereres have the same speed for all players, bumping is now arguably fairer.  OTOH nearer can be anything, it depends on the distances from town A and B to rare resource R.  I fail to see the point of a fixed radius; potential sov is not the same as claimed sov.

Interesting options... i woted for "Harvest anywhere but sov squares", but none of those options is used and probably none of them will be used.

Currently it is more like: Harvest anywhere where you managed to put your army. (because you was lucky to be online when rare harvestables appear?)

Interesting how people say that bumping is normal on basic resources and putting armies there and killing other caravans is rude/hostile but for less common stuff their opinion change. Personaly I send 40 herbalists to some empty rare herb location every day and then hope that there will be no <beep> player putting army on that spot before they arrive (or after).

Where I do not have close neighbors, I keep an army on resources I want. This is to -

1. Avoid wandering critters occupying the square.

2. Avoid someone else sending an army from a far away city to the square and telling me the square now squarely belongs to him.

2 is very likely to happen if you have valuable resources near. I sympathize with what Mogul and Binky said. But unless you have some agreements with neighbors, keep an army on the resources you want. If you take back an occupied square from an alliance bigger than yours, they will call you a bully and come after you. 

That was back when the poll was open for people to vote more then once. So someone voted tons of times on that just to shoot it up. 

Someone comes from 100 distance to bump you on your sov squares at 2 distance from your town? Perfect, you bump them back all the times necessary, they go back with nothing until ppl realizes it's just silly to do it. You aren't happy you can still camp the resource at your army's own risk.