Well, 4 hours later my attacker plundered and stole 10 Granite. I still got all my other stuff.
I guess I'll default to 2 Spearfighters since there's no way to beat 7 rogues +1.
Don't do that. As
@Emberguard and
@Algona point out, leaving your defense at 2 Spearmen means anyone in the hood can successfully attack you, leaving you to deal with potentially up to 80 plunderers to deal with instead of one or two. And, as
@BlackSand the Sly points out, you don't have to necessarily beat them, just make it so that the cost of beating you is not worth what they can
maybe plunder from you. The one "advantage" that the city defense army has is that you never lose units in it, nor do your units ever have less health than when you assigned them there. At the end of every attack on your city defense, all your units are restored to the health they had at the beginning of that battle, even if they were killed. The attacker, however, really loses units that die in the attack, and any injured troops of theirs has to heal normally. So if you can make it even a little costly to attack you, that will deter a good portion of your neighborhood from even trying.
Of course, the key to having a defense that deters some neighbors is to not rush your advance through the ages. When you properly develop your city and take your time on the tech tree, you will generally end up in the top half of your neighborhood rankings. And that, by itself, will deter many of the lower ranked neighbors from ever even testing your defense.