That's one way of doing it.
Other methods include:
I was thinking of creating a new city on their island to both station troops there as well as to cut out half of the trip. Now boats are only going from their island to mine instead of constantly from mine to theirs and back.
With a big enough account you can use freighters, so you can pillage even more.
Simply said you do the same as what you've written above, but you let the Freighters (which can't be used for pillaging) carry the ressources back to your home.
This means your normal trading ships are 24/7 free for pillaging.
If you only have normal trading ships for now I would recommend to instead use one of the options that IM_Mike mentioned (if doable), since a newly founded city would mean that you first have to upgrade the docks heavily / lose a lot of time while loading the ressources.
How do you guys repeatedly pillage players from far away to siphon their resources?
Your initial thought is called planting a mobile. An alternative is teleporting an existing city. A third is to occupy an existing city nearby and they get a small percentage of your take.
wait a bit....isn't the port from the target town used to load the resources...?
dictating your loading time...not the one from where you pillage..?
next...is something changed or you also need warehouses first (for a floater)?...
as far as i know you can't exceed your storage capacity soo...floaters are amlost out of question for this...?
wait a bit....isn't the port from the target town used to load the resources...?
Yes. If you Occupy a nearby town you can raid from there, cutting the travel time - useful if you have to wave - but the looting time is slightly different: your cargo ships travel from the occupied town to your target (where they loot) then back to the occupied town and then to your nominated city.
next...is something changed or you also need warehouses first (for a floater)?...
as far as i know you can't exceed your storage capacity soo...floaters are amlost out of question for this...?
Why?
It's an easy/cheap/quick task to upgrade 5 warehouses and 3 depots to a level where you can storage 1mio, 2mio or even 3mio in your city.
The issue is more about emptying the city every day fast enough via Freighters (and having enough to do so), so you have enough capacity to pillage again.
TH5, build CF1/2, then spam 5 WH 3 Dumps.
Don't forget two Trading Ports to export the loot.
Actually, and unfortunately, there is no quick AND safe way to do this. Let's suppose that the player pillaged wont resist, cant resist, would not attack to take the resources back, and wont receive any help by anyone. Let's assume for that scenario 1 an inactive player AND that no one will attack your town. End of scenario. Freighters could need days to load and travel, but eventually they will take your pillage back home.
Scenario no 2, the player resists, or some else will try to steel your gathered loot. End of scenario.... There is no way to protect the res. The mobile town is small, build up, it bits the purpose. Move army and navy to protect the res by fighting, bits the purpose too.
Scenario 3 occupying another town, will work with scenario 1 facts, indeed you half the time needed, with 10% cost. However, if player defences, or host town v-mode or another player interfere, back to scenario 2.
Conclusion, if undisturbed, use freighters. If disturbed, find another target to pillage.
It's quicker than it's ever been because of CF. If you build a high enough CF, you can quickly build the town out. A lot quicker than you think. Also low level warehouses build super fast now, even without CF, so it's easy to get plenty of storage.
A small mobile town is a small battlefield size if you play the garrison correctly so it's much, much easier to defend.
