Favorable or unfavorable exchange?

Had a strange interaction the other day. I would like to know for future reference how to best assess such interactions before jumping into them and possibly jeopardizing myself where I don’t need to. I’m not sure I’m considering all the variables appropriately. Anything veteran players would like to say about assessing trade-offs like this would also be appreciated.

Me (Ports) v. Chinese on Great Plains.

I get to Age II first. I send the covered wagon to set up on the side of the map beside the middle trading route trade post. Nothing within my LoS tells me there is any of my opponent’s units over there. As soon as the TC is up—the opponent has also aged by then—I see within its LoS 1 vill building a castle and 2 hunting. I immediately called out colonial militia and killed the vill building, the 2 hunting—which tried to finish the castle—and sieged the unfinished castle with Minutemen.

On paper this is a bad trade for me. I lose 800 resources (400 food/400 gold) in the Colonial Militia—and a shipment—while the opponent loses 300 food in the vills, 250 wood in the castle and 100 coin totaling at 650 resources for him. Would you value the wood more highly than the other resources? Would the Minutemen have been better saved for a rush? Since a villager death generally compels a player to replace it, is the cost of losing a villager to be viewed as 200 instead of 100? How do you figure map control into an assessment of one’s advantage? Would you have done the same thing?

I ended up winning the game, though it was the result of preserving my economy while the opponent dumped all his resources into failed rushes with little followup. In my view, the above-mentioned interaction had little to do with the victory, or, I won despite its cost.