Looking at the larger picture, I can see this as a valid suggestion with merits, but the means of achieving the goal of identifying enemies and allies on the field might need to be explored further.
The scenario where a faction you never heard of enemies you, or is teaming up with someone else,is a prime example, you have never heard of them or had dealings with them yet they start coming around your base and attacking, it would be helpful for new players on the server to be able to sort their allies and enemies a little easier as well as know a players intent during a battle in a moment. Giving the advantage to players who have only been here longer is not fair in anyway in such a situation, all it does is take advantage of a new player on the server which has in many cases I have direct knowledge of, lost us a valuable potential member of the massive community. Relying on this advantage and exploiting it for gain is crappy.
Obviously this is a suggestion that would require a fair amount of work to implements in any way, so its probably not likely to happen, however, if the idea is explored a few simple solutions come to mind.
The names in chat already have a color code to identify if the player is premium or non-premium, although it does not work for some long names (which is something separate that also needs addressing). Having all names show in the same color as allies/enemies/neutral/truce would be a simple and probably the easiest nomenclature to implement. An obvious issue with this solution is that it would eliminate the current premium/non-premium status, which brings up another solution suggestion. If the premium status identifier was changed to something else it would make this work. A simple "*" or "**" before a name, just like faction leader and officer identifiers could be used and also identify if the player was premium or staff. I'm sure if this is explored further an even better premium identifier could be found.
Just some suggestions since I understand the frustrations of new players on the server when they are coming to grips with the complexity of the server and community, especially with the high rate of random attacks, or attacks from one enemy who bring along loads of their friends from other various factions you may have never heard of to boost their attacks, which can be quite taxing.
