You can try to make s case that a player without troops in a city should not have that city, but that goes completely against the game system of Evony. If that were the case there would be no comforting or ST, and alliance members wouldn't be able to reinforce an empty city. Evony clearly decided that players should be able to hold empty cities, perhaps indefinitely, through the use of closed gates, ST, reinf and comfort.

In this particular case, I believe it would be wrong to assume that the city always remains without troops and remain in Hughesy's possession solely through comfort. The city has been cleared, and then refilled either with Hughesy's troops, drafts or alliance reinforcements. The amount of honor he has accumulated testifies to the fact that there has been an active defence.

Perhaps it would be more realistic if, once a city has been cleared of troops, it would automatically fall on the very next successful attack and forget about loyalty, ST or comfort. That's pretty well how it goes in RL. However, that not how it works in the world of Evony. In short, if you want to "tweak" or "alter" (both of which are just synonyms for "change") the system of comforting, you have to look long and hard at the ramifications in game play. If they start fiddling with things on demand without really looking at the consequences, we'll be even worse off than before.

Middy