Apparently troops return immediately from a war... Really?

Today I accidentally let my resources go just a tiny bit above the safe limit and someone already decided to attack. No biggie, since I could just spend my excessive resources before of its arrival. And since the dude that was going to attack me had his army occupied on attacking me, I thought to perform a counter-strike since he had an influx of alcohol to grab.

But apparently, when an attack is performed, the army returns immediately at home – his did, before my attack was there – which doesn't make much sense to me. They have teleports or something? To me it seems like the army should take the same time to return, no? That's what I'm used to at least when playing other browser-based strategy games.

Because of using my common sense, I had just sent my troops to a suicide mission.

Oh well, here goes the 4th attempt of building an army...

^{I'm sorry Big Mamas, I just keep killing you.}