My son, did I ever tell you the story about the strange soldier Cubanius? Once, we were preparing to raid a small, undefended Gaul village. Cubanius, who was always a bit odd, woke up one morning and charged into the village alone, before anyone could stop him. He ran up to a hut and slammed open the door, but an old woman threw flour in his face and her 8 year old grand daughter ham strung Cubanius from behind while he was blinded. We always wondered what would cause someone to go into a village alone like that.

Summary: Always send at least two troops on a raid. If you only send one, it will die, even if there are no defending troops in the village. The reason for this is that every village has a small inherent defense value, so even a population 2 village with no troops will defeat a single infantry unit sent against it. Building a residence and wall adds to this inherent defense, so once the residence and wall are up to around level 10, even sending 100 infantry units will result in several of them dying.

When in doubt, always use the combat simulator before you send troops. Since you've hopefully already read Tip #1, then you've spent gold to buy the Plus option, which will make the simulator much more useful to you. Once you've scouted the enemy village to determine it's defenses, plug all of the information into the simulator.

If you want to stop losing a few units every time you raid or attack a village, be sure to destroy the enemy Residence or Palace. Destroying the wall will also help, but even a maxxed out wall won't kill troops without a Residence present.