Money For Nothing - Resources For free

[Console_Cowboy]

Hi.  It's the noob again. 

I have read comments about abandoned provinces being a good source of free resources.  I assume an abandoned province is that way because a player has left the game and left the spoils of whatever is in his/her provinces.

How do I find them - because right now, even if I was staring at one, I would not know if the province was abandoned or not.  I would like to identify at least one. So a 2-parter (again):

1 - Where do I find abandoned provinces?
2 - What am I looking for to tell me they are abandoned?

[Radooo]

they have a coin next to their name

[Console_Cowboy]

  I was offering one an alliance... no wonder my offer was ignored. 

Thanks for the reply.  So, do I pillage that place (don't want to do that) or can I siege it?  How do I liberate the resources? 

And, how does a kingdom get abandoned?  If I do not log on to my account for a month, for example building up resources, do I get a coin next to my name?  Or do I have to go through a formal process like cancelling my account for example or getting booted from the game as another example? (In other words, I want to avoid the coin on my name.)

A separate question, but tied to the symbol of coins:
How can I identify a gold mine?  I thought a gold mine would be marked by the gold coin.... apparently not.

[Radooo]

gold mine = abandoned province

An account becomes gold mine if the user didn't log in for more than a week. And you will take their resources exactly the same as for other players

[Console_Cowboy]

An account becomes gold mine if the user didn't log in for more than a week.

So the player may still be playing and in good standing - yet become a gold mine.

That is useful information!  Thank you
+1