explore is cool, but don't give up the offense.
afterall if for example my attacker can brake you once I can do it every 12 hours until you are to small for me.
and at large size that might mean loss of a lot of time.

keep offense to defend yourself, just don't use it.
better play a race that can maintain a very high defense with the offense in.
actually attacking is expensive and riskey. and there comes a point in the age where if you don't have kd support you'd better explore/train rather then leave the province with low defense.
ofcourse you have to retaliate repeated hits, you can even let the first one go if you beleive it to be truely random and of non repited pattern.
hits that are going to duplicate themself must be retalled.