This feature allows each player to have 12 friends, which you can see if they are on-line and have quick access to message a friend. In addition to these things, there is also a few bonuses - a one-time gold bonus for each new colony established (demolishing a town and then re-founding it does not yield the gold bonus) and a 1% research point bonus based on friend completed research subject, for each friend.
IMPORTANT-NOTE: FACEBOOK FRIENDS WILL NOT GIVE YOU A BLUE CAP FRIEND.
The largest possible number of research points you can gain is 1% of 532,800 (the cost of the first future research), ie. 5,328 . All future researches, regardless of the actual level completed, use level 1 as base to calculate the 1% research point bonus.
- Speculation:
- A source claims 1/300 of future 1 points, meaning 1598400 / 300 = 1776
- But this is only the maximum you can get, as there are other rules as well.
- You can only receive the half of the points you need for your next (cheapest!) research. So if you would get 1776 points but your next research is going underwater, costing 24 points - you only get half of 24, ie 12 points.
The message that appears on the "Mayor" screen when you get the news is as follows:
- <span title=" Expression error: Unrecognized punctuation character "&". Research Point(s)"> Expression error: Unrecognized punctuation character "&".
Bonus[]
When one of your friends make a new town for the first time (mobile towns only count first time since Patch 0.4.1) you gain a sum of gold. The amount is based on both your towns and your friend towns.