Is it worth attacking a town?

Attacking looks cool, but is it actually profitable? I asked myself this after burning an army on a town that produced almost nothing. So let me break down the real economics, because war in this game is a business decision, not just fighting. Start with the costs. The deploy fee is nothing, only 0.0001 gold per soldier to the game fund, forget about it. The real cost is the soldiers. Troops you send never come back. Even when you WIN, you permanently lose soldiers worth the defense you had to beat, and the soldiers that survive stay to occupy and then die on their own after some days. In other words, every soldier you commit to an attack is eventually gone. And those soldiers were not free, training them cost you time, energy, materials and a house room each. If you LOSE, meaning your attack is below their defense, you lose the entire force and get nothing back at all. Now the reward. When you hold a town, its owner pays you 10% of everything they produce, automatically, for as long as your garrison survives. That garrison lives about as many days as the town happiness. So the total prize is roughly this: 10% of that town production, times the number of days you can hold. A town that mines a lot of gold can pay back a whole army. A sleepy town that makes almost nothing will never pay back the soldiers you spent. So the real question before every attack is simple: will the 10% I collect over the days I hold be worth MORE than the army I will never get back? If yes, attack. If no, walk away. The game actually helps you judge this. On the attack page there is a "best targets" list, which sorts by the most gold mined for each point of defense you have to beat. That is literally a return on investment ranking, so use it. There is also top gold miners (the richest to tax) and weakest garrisons (the cheapest to crack). The dream target is a rich producer with a thin garrison in a country near you, so the march is short too. A few rules of thumb I follow now. Attack rich and weakly defended, never poor and strongly defended. A short march is better than a long one, because your army does nothing while it walks. Send enough attack to beat their defense with a small margin, but understand that a giant overkill does not reduce your battle losses, it just leaves a bigger garrison that will also eventually die holding the place. And check whether the town is already occupied by someone else, because then you fight their garrison, which can be much tougher than the sleepy local defenders. My honest conclusion after some wins and some stupid losses: attacking IS worth it, but only against the right target. Treat every campaign like an investment. Look at what the town produces, look at the defense you must beat, and only march when the tax clearly beats the price of the army. Do that and war becomes one of the best incomes in the game. Do it emotionally and you just feed your soldiers to a town that gives you nothing.