Mike Rockey said:

towns continue to produce resources even if they are dead so a town that has been dead for a few months MAY contain resource but you don't know when it was last hit so could be empty hth Mike

Towns below 6 give no resources when attacked (which was the OP's point).

It's a correct point for 6 or over. And the reason why Orders get irritated when others hit their (farm) town(s) within their Citadel Valley.

For towns inactive that long, someone will already have hit and drained them. As RSS continues to produce automatically until their capacity is reached, you can thieve that new growth afterwards. Which is why noting any high level / inactive / unshielded towns can be lucrative - they tend to have high capacity levels reached every 8 - 24 hours'ish. If, as noted, someone else hasn't raided them already.

Note there are no points gained for hitting such towns. (Stealing RSS brings no points.)

For the OP, the observations made there are correct.

Add, though, often such towns go unnoticed, so during Hunting Enemies, OvO, or KvK, where points are acquired for killing enemies troops. You can get enough points to be worth attacking them, if only once.

Unlike RSS, troops don't continue to grow automatically, making hitting such towns more than once 'pointless'. Training must be started manually, so if the town is inactive there hasn't been anyone around to start such training. So, no troops. ('cause someone else has likely already killed them.)

Can't hurt to send one scout in to see, hero unnecessary. If it dies, you can then hit, and scout again, for a few event points. If it doesn't die, there are no scouts left to hit, and the report will show whether there are any other troops to be raped.

Note that inns require L6 to start, so such towns haven't been reinforced. (They can, however, reinforce others.) [A common tactic at that level is to send such troops to reinforce a shielded town, so you don't have to spend gold on shields in the mean time.]

Careful though, some such towns have quite a few troops. You can accidentally lose a lot of troops if you're not careful.

GL&HF