Time for me to complain...
I knew the person would recall prior to the fight but only defended to protect my turrets. Now here is the problem and how it can be abused. The attacker will always get a counter attack on the defender (at least in my experience fighting high level players with max stats). I have to decide if I want to protect my turrets at the cost of a few thousand cats and recieve no prestige for my losses or just let the attacker wipe out all my defenses. This becomes a very difficult decision for lower level players causing just about everyone to hunt and rebuild defenses later.
I think recall should be useable only before the first or second round and any losses suffered prior to recall should result in prestige.
This still allows people to recall if they see an army bigger then they expected and gives the defender a reason to defend!
Well I am tired and just lost my train of thought. So thats the end of the post.
Edit- Basically with game mechanics the way they are currently there is no incentive for players to defend there cities.