You have an army and you understand how battles resolve. Now: who can you actually attack? CoinRepublik places one firm rule on your ambitions, and it shapes the whole political map of war. You can only attack towns that belong to a country other than your own. Foreign ground is fair game; your own countryfolk are off limits. This single rule turns war into something that happens between countries rather than within them, and it is worth understanding why before you go hunting for a target.
The foreign-only rule
The logic is that your country is your home team. You cannot attack your own town, obviously, but you also cannot attack any town in your own country - your neighbours are your compatriots, not your prey. To make war you must look abroad, at towns whose owners have chosen a different flag. This means your list of possible targets is every town in every country except yours, which is still an enormous world, but it also means that moving to a different country changes who your enemies and allies are. Citizenship is not just a market and a tax rate; it is a line drawn across the battlefield.
This rule has a quiet strategic weight. If you want to raid a particular player, they must be in a foreign country - and if they share your flag, they are untouchable by you as long as you both stay put. Some players deliberately cluster in a country for mutual safety; others go adventuring abroad precisely to find towns worth taking. There is no right answer, only a trade-off: your countryfolk cannot hit you, but you cannot hit them either. The map of who-can-attack-whom is really just the map of who lives where.
The attack button lives on the profile
Finding a fight is done from a player's profile page. When you view another player's profile, you will see an Attack this town button sitting among the actions. Press it and the attack planner opens, showing you the target's defences, the distance your troops must travel, how long they will take, and a roster where you choose exactly how many of each troop to send. It is the same planner every time, and it does all the arithmetic for you - your attack total, the fee, the travel time - so you can weigh the raid before you commit.
Same country, no attack
If you open the profile of someone in your own country, the attack button is there but disabled, with a note that you cannot attack a town in your own country. This is not a bug or a missing feature - it is the foreign-only rule showing itself in the interface. To attack that player you would both have to end up in different countries.
One more practical point about targets before we march. A town you attack does not have to be a peaceful, independent one - it might already be occupied by some other player. That changes who you actually fight in an interesting way, and it opens up tactics like liberating a friend or muscling in on a rival's conquest. We will cover that fully near the end of the chapter, once occupation itself makes sense. For now, hold the simple version: pick a foreign player, open their profile, and the Attack button is your doorway to war. Next we learn what happens the moment you press it - the long march across a world of real distances.