How to liberate your town

One day I logged in and my town said "Your town is occupied". Some player from another country had marched an army in and was taking 10% of everything I produced. If this happens to you, do not panic, you can fight back, and fighting on your own ground is actually the cheapest fight in the whole game. Here is how liberation works. First you will know it clearly. Your town shows an occupied panel with the name of who holds you, and you get an event about it. From that moment the occupier takes a tenth of all your production until you remove them, so you want to act. The good news is the mechanic. Liberating your own town happens right there, in place. There is NO travel time, because the fight is at home, and there is NO deploy fee, because you pay nothing to fight on your own ground. This is the big advantage of the defender. You simply throw your home garrison at the occupier and the battle happens immediately. How the battle is decided. Your home army attack points against the occupier defense points. If your attack is higher, the occupiers are wiped out and your town is free again, and you only lose soldiers worth the defense you had to beat (the game takes your strongest units first). The survivors stay home. If your attack is lower, your liberation force is lost and they keep holding you, although they also lose some troops worth your attack. If it is exactly equal, both armies are destroyed but the town still frees. So even a tie gets your town back. So the plan is simple: look at the occupier force, it shows you their defense points, then train soldiers until your attack points are clearly above that number, and press "Liberate my town". Assault troops with their high attack are great for this, because in a liberation YOU are the attacker. Do not be shy about trying. Since a failed attempt only costs you the soldiers you sent, most people just build up defense and assault together and hit the button once they are sure they beat the occupier defense. Keep training between attempts, watch your attack points climb past their number, and the town is yours again. But the best liberation is the one you never need. Prevention is much cheaper than fighting. Keep a strong home garrison at all times. Defense troops give you 500 defense for a cheap unit, so a wall of them makes your defense points high. Attackers can see your defense before they commit, and most of them hunt the weakest garrisons, so a fat garrison simply makes them skip you and attack somebody easier. One more comforting thing. Because you fight for free on your own soil, even if your first liberation fails you can rebuild your army and try again, as many times as it takes. And the occupier cannot recall their troops either, their garrison dies on its own after some days equal to your town happiness. So sometimes, if you cannot win yet, you just build defense, survive, and they expire by themselves. But if you can win, liberate as soon as your attack beats their defense, and stop paying that 10% tax.