There will be a lightning bolt where the swords once were. If nothing is available, you can come back later. On success, you’ll enter their city and if stuff is available, you can take it (if you want). If you lose, then you get nada (aside from some experience fighting if you did so manually, which is recommended when dealing with the hood). If you attack them and are successful, you get the chance to plunder their stuff. Clicking to attack will open up the battle screen, but unlike working on your continent map or GE you cannot see what they have set for a defending army nor what their defending army’s attacking and defending boost is. The little swords at the bottom are to attack. In the image below (taken from PC) you’ll see that the “Aid” buttons are big and orange, and then to the right of each avatar are three more images (on mobile when you click a person it will have a button clearly marked attack). So when you’re looking through your neighborhood, you’ll have two options: Aid or Attack. Plundering is the act of attacking your neighbor, and then stealing their stuff. However, we all hit that stroke of luck in our game at one point or another where we have a relentless attacker and plunderer, and we’re left with few options. If you’re lucky, you sometimes live in the middle of that where you don’t attack your hood often, and it’s rare you get attacked. For others, being the victims of plunder and never the attacker happens more frequently than they’d like. For some, attacking and plundering is second nature.

Inno Games built Forge of Empires with plundering as part of the design, and they’ve made no bones about it that it’s here to stay.

Plundering is a part of the game that isn’t going anywhere.

Forge of empires see who plundered me