Am I Missing Something?

OK, I get the 2nd rule of Haypi Kingdom (the first rule of Haypi Kingdom is don't talk about Haypi Kingdom): DON'T LEAVE YOUR TROOPS NAKED IN YOUR CITY.

And for the 4th time in as many weeks, I've gotten bitten by this.

Here's what's odd about this, in 3 of the 4 cases, the attacker was located some significant distance from me, on the order of at least an hour away.

I get the bit with spending coins to warp instantly next to me, pound me, and get PP, it's the scouting that I'm missing

If I scout in my vicinity on a 6 by 6 screen traverse (about 7 minutes distance), if I were located at 200,200, the area covered would go from 179,179 to 221,221, and scan all the cities, and review all the scans, we are talking about 15 minutes (Maybe 10 on Wi-Fi).

Well, for someone to scan an area from an hour and a half away (typical distance somewhere around 250 squares), they would need to cover about 100x more area, or have a scan that takes about 1000 minutes (16+ hours).

I gotta figure that I am missing a scouting shortcut, or that IOS massively outperforms android, or I've been hit on what amounts to about a 4000 to one against event. (In each case, I was distracted for 15 minutes, so 64 quarter hours is 64^3 or 2^12, or about 4096:1).

(note to self: do not eat bean burritos and play Haypi)

The first thing you need to master in order to successfully and consistently gain prestige by attacking others is the fine art of scouting.

Scouting is actually quite simple to do....the thing that makes it challenging is the tediousness of the whole ordeal.

You can spend all day scouting thousands of cities and not find a single city with troops exposed. This is why you need to develop a dependable method of scouting. There are several ways to go about it. I will outline a few techniques for you....

The most efficient method, in my opinion, is to get a pen and paper, and copy the names of the top 500 generals in the ranks. These generals are the most likely to have built an army worthy of attacking or more importantly, teleporting to attack. After you've compiled your list, begin scouting each name 1 by 1 and also scout any cities near this generals that are a favorable level....it will vary server by server, but generally, scout anything lv9 or higher. It is important to note along with these names any sub cities you can find that belong to these ranked generals.
Go down the entire list and repeat the process over and over. As time progresses, you will begin to memorize the names of these generals and be able to recognize them with a quick glance. Try and figure out when these generals are likely active, and inactive, by sending them letters, pm's, observing wc, and the hunt/upgrade/fort messages that appear on your main screen. Obviously, for the purposes of gaining pres, it is optimal if your enemy is not commanding, so using your intel, try and break your scoutlist into timezones.
A general who is sleeping is likely to have hunted their troops, but when you find one who hasn't, chances are he won't command or hide his troops before your attack lands. A general who is awake is more likely to have troops exposed, so is a risky target to attack as his troops are likely farming etc, and the enemy can easily detect your attack and deal with it accordingly.

Another effective method, though not as reliable, is to religiously watch the messages that appear on your main screen, that tell you the harvest results of a hunt. A general who has harvested means that his troops are now exposed....it's just a matter of you knowing which city\ies his troops are stationed in. Again, this is extremely boring.

Another great way to find troops to kill is to befriend others, and earn their respect. You'd be surprised how many people will turncoat on their fellow alliance members for a medal or gem etc. Pay people to rat out their teammates. 
Also, don't be rude to people you've hit. Lots of times, a person will remember you have a huge army (or whatever the case may be) and turn to you when they find troops They aren't strong enough/large enough to kill. 

The more you scout, the more you will learn the tendencies and routines of other players, regardless of their scout level.

Starving players is am excellent way to expose troops, provided that you know they HAVE enough troops in a city to starve. It is also quite difficult to starve someone, particularly if they are online at the time. It requires diligence and persistence. Another thing that makes this method difficult is that you really have no way of knowing which city of an enemy benefits from an oasis, as well as how many oases the player is controlling. The ONLY way (short of cheating) to know that they won't benefit from oases is if you actually find ALL their oases....and this can only be done if they hold the max amount for their level. Otherwise, it's just a chance, not a given.

There are plenty more ways to go about handling your issue, but the thing to remember is Tht no matter what, the enemy is only a button press away from thwarting all your efforts, so you have to take this into account when selecting a target. 

I have successfully wiped hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of armies, and I have missed many more than that by people hunting while my attack is en route. I have ss for every hit I have ever made, for several reasons.

One, to prove I don't cheat by feeding. Two, to refer to the ss for scouting purposes, and three, well, it's nice to be able to post a 175k hit to my alliance pal group for morale boosting and bragging rights lol.

In the end, it all comes down to scouting, be it by you or another person. Master scouting, and youll find targets are not so rare or difficult to hit a you may think now.

What you are missing is that you are not taking into account alliances. Its not just those individual players who hit you that are scouting for your pp, my alliance chat has pp hits posted in it all the time, they are found by a lower level member who cant do the hit or a non coiner who cant warp there to do the hit so they post them in ac so the higher level members and coiner members can get the pp.

Also there are tons of pp hits posted in wc all the time by random people, you have to be careful though because some of those are traps.

sorry if taem said the same thing i didnt have time to read that wall of text.

I'm lucky enough to be in an alliance that posts hits often, because I am terrible at scouting. And yes, making friends with other players helps too. I don't know how many times a friend from another timezone would letter me coords for potential starves because he has to sleep and didn't want it to go to waste.

OK, I get the 2nd rule of Haypi Kingdom (the first rule of Haypi Kingdom is don't talk about Haypi Kingdom): DON'T LEAVE YOUR TROOPS NAKED IN YOUR CITY.

And for the 4th time in as many weeks, I've gotten bitten by this.

Here's what's odd about this, in 3 of the 4 cases, the attacker was located some significant distance from me, on the order of at least an hour away.

I get the bit with spending coins to warp instantly next to me, pound me, and get PP, it's the scouting that I'm missing

If I scout in my vicinity on a 6 by 6 screen traverse (about 7 minutes distance), if I were located at 200,200, the area covered would go from 179,179 to 221,221, and scan all the cities, and review all the scans, we are talking about 15 minutes (Maybe 10 on Wi-Fi).

Well, for someone to scan an area from an hour and a half away (typical distance somewhere around 250 squares), they would need to cover about 100x more area, or have a scan that takes about 1000 minutes (16+ hours).

I gotta figure that I am missing a scouting shortcut, or that IOS massively outperforms android, or I've been hit on what amounts to about a 4000 to one against event. (In each case, I was distracted for 15 minutes, so 64 quarter hours is 64^3 or 2^12, or about 4096:1).

(note to self: do not eat bean burritos and play Haypi)

Sir, I applaud you for your calculations, but I don't think they are that necessary....
Also once you get to higher levels and you depend on large pp hits then heres a good tip: Search the map, and when you see a <level 7 oasis that is red, find the owner's city/ies and if they are a decent level (>level 12) scout them. Chances are they should be starving soon

OK, I get the 2nd rule of Haypi Kingdom (the first rule of Haypi Kingdom is don't talk about Haypi Kingdom): DON'T LEAVE YOUR TROOPS NAKED IN YOUR CITY.

And for the 4th time in as many weeks, I've gotten bitten by this.

Here's what's odd about this, in 3 of the 4 cases, the attacker was located some significant distance from me, on the order of at least an hour away.

I get the bit with spending coins to warp instantly next to me, pound me, and get PP, it's the scouting that I'm missing

If I scout in my vicinity on a 6 by 6 screen traverse (about 7 minutes distance), if I were located at 200,200, the area covered would go from 179,179 to 221,221, and scan all the cities, and review all the scans, we are talking about 15 minutes (Maybe 10 on Wi-Fi).

Well, for someone to scan an area from an hour and a half away (typical distance somewhere around 250 squares), they would need to cover about 100x more area, or have a scan that takes about 1000 minutes (16+ hours).

I gotta figure that I am missing a scouting shortcut, or that IOS massively outperforms android, or I've been hit on what amounts to about a 4000 to one against event. (In each case, I was distracted for 15 minutes, so 64 quarter hours is 64^3 or 2^12, or about 4096:1).

(note to self: do not eat bean burritos and play Haypi)

Sir, I applaud you for your calculations, but I don't think they are that necessary....
Also once you get to higher levels and you depend on large pp hits then heres a good tip: Search the map, and when you see a <level 7 oasis that is red, find the owner's city/ies and if they are a decent level (>level 12) scout them. Chances are they should be starving soon

Are you suggesting cropping, or just checking the city.

BTW, on higher level oppoents, I almost never get the detailed scout report.