1st question
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tjs282
Stone \ Cold / Fish
First off, welcome to CFC! 
You can't stop them crossing your borders, but once they're there, the simplest way to try and get rid of them is to right-click on one of the offending units, and tell him 'take me to your leader'. Then you'll be given the option to eject foreign units from your land. The first request may be honoured or ignored, but if you have to do it (more than?) 2 turns in a row, you will eventually be allowed to say 'take 'em out or put 'em up!'
At that point the AICiv must either comply (all their units will retreat to the nearest friendly/neutral square), or declare war (more likely if your military is rated 'average to weak' compared to theirs). If they do declare, all their units and cities become fair game -- but so do yours.
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If they build inside the zone that you have decided will be yours at some point in the future, you can eliminate a colony (yours or theirs) immediately by building a city on an adjacent tile, or by bringing the resource inside your borders by cultural expansion (by building e.g. a temple or library in a nearby city(s)). You can also try to get their cities to 'flip' over to you as a result of your cultural expansion/development, but the flip is randomly determined, based on a usually very low probability of occurrence.
The quickest way to get (rid of) their colonies/cities is by warfare (attacking a colony is an automatic act of war). But you may need to think very carefully before doing that...
I'd strongly recommend you to check out the CivIII 'War Academy' for a whole bunch of hugely helpful articles and resources. They'll tell you about all the stuff that isn't in the Manual or Civilopedia.
And never be afraid to ask questions either -- there are still a lot of expert players (I am not one of them -- yet!) who regularly contribute to the CFC forums, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that 99.999% of the posters here are unfailingly polite and helpful -- even to noobs.
You can't stop them crossing your borders, but once they're there, the simplest way to try and get rid of them is to right-click on one of the offending units, and tell him 'take me to your leader'. Then you'll be given the option to eject foreign units from your land. The first request may be honoured or ignored, but if you have to do it (more than?) 2 turns in a row, you will eventually be allowed to say 'take 'em out or put 'em up!'
At that point the AICiv must either comply (all their units will retreat to the nearest friendly/neutral square), or declare war (more likely if your military is rated 'average to weak' compared to theirs). If they do declare, all their units and cities become fair game -- but so do yours.
The AI will never build colonies or cities within your borders. They cannot do the former, and the latter is an automatic act of war. The AI will [EDIT]usually not build cities right on your border, either, if it still has anywhere else it could go. (Better, BC?
)If they build inside the zone that you have decided will be yours at some point in the future, you can eliminate a colony (yours or theirs) immediately by building a city on an adjacent tile, or by bringing the resource inside your borders by cultural expansion (by building e.g. a temple or library in a nearby city(s)). You can also try to get their cities to 'flip' over to you as a result of your cultural expansion/development, but the flip is randomly determined, based on a usually very low probability of occurrence.
The quickest way to get (rid of) their colonies/cities is by warfare (attacking a colony is an automatic act of war). But you may need to think very carefully before doing that...
I'd strongly recommend you to check out the CivIII 'War Academy' for a whole bunch of hugely helpful articles and resources. They'll tell you about all the stuff that isn't in the Manual or Civilopedia.
And never be afraid to ask questions either -- there are still a lot of expert players (I am not one of them -- yet!) who regularly contribute to the CFC forums, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that 99.999% of the posters here are unfailingly polite and helpful -- even to noobs.
Just a quick correction-aside, but I've had games where the AI will dump a new city right on my border, it does happen, it just doesn't 'generally' happen. I've no idea if there were some specific circumstances, but I know for sure they are capable of it.
I was wondering if it was another sub-glitch, because in my current game my border expanded over a Luxury, taking it from the AI, then the AI sent in a worker to put a road on the Luxury (thanks AI, that's kind of you) - so I was thinking that maybe the AI script has an issue with borders in certain, as yet unknown, circumstances (that might also explain why they march Settlers over borders so freely).
But, yes, the general rule is how you describe it.
I was wondering if it was another sub-glitch, because in my current game my border expanded over a Luxury, taking it from the AI, then the AI sent in a worker to put a road on the Luxury (thanks AI, that's kind of you) - so I was thinking that maybe the AI script has an issue with borders in certain, as yet unknown, circumstances (that might also explain why they march Settlers over borders so freely).
But, yes, the general rule is how you describe it.
tjs282
Stone \ Cold / Fish
More points about booting units:
If there is still unclaimed territory which the AI would have to go through your turf to get to, and the AI has sent a Settler+escort pair across your borders, you may want to think twice before booting them, based on relative military/cultural strengths.
If you are rated 'strong' compared to them, then there's no reason why you shouldn't just let them build a city for you -- because it will likely soon be yours anyway! This saves you the cost of a Settler (30 shields and 10-20 food), and you may even be able to 'shepherd' the AI units to the tile where you want the city, by using e.g. Warriors/ Scouts/ Horses to occupy your less-favoured tiles (and bearing in mind that the AI won't settle in a CxC pattern, or directly adjacent to a foreign border, if it can do otherwise). So you'd need to let them get more than halfway to their destination before you boot them, so they get a 'free pass' across the rest of your territory.
Conversely, if you are average/weak against them, then you may prefer to just let them slog along under their own steam (moving at 1 tile per turn). That way, you'll have more time to build/move a Settler to the juicy tile yourself (using your roads at 3 tiles per turn) before the AI gets there, at which point they may just turn around and go home (or settle on a more marginal tile instead, e.g. Tundra). Also, if the parent-AI is silly enough to DoW you while their Settler is still within (striking distance of) your borders, then capturing it will give you 2 maintenance-free slave-Workers.
And of course, the boot mechanic can also work in your favour too. Say you have units out exploring near AI cities, but you want to bring them home (e.g. to upgrade them). Start heading back towards your borders and wait for the boot-order. So long as you can get your units to 'your' side of the AI's capital/core before it comes (and depending on how culturally developed the AI's core cities are), you'll get to insta-jump over some/all of the remaining intervening tiles to your border.
At worst, you get to move a Warrior 2 tiles in a single turn instead of one. At best, you could save half a dozen movement-turns (or even more, if you have several units annoying the AI) -- which could make all the difference between being able to strengthen your army sufficiently to deter an AI DoW, and not getting your units home and upgraded in time to fight off an invasion.
If there is still unclaimed territory which the AI would have to go through your turf to get to, and the AI has sent a Settler+escort pair across your borders, you may want to think twice before booting them, based on relative military/cultural strengths.
If you are rated 'strong' compared to them, then there's no reason why you shouldn't just let them build a city for you -- because it will likely soon be yours anyway! This saves you the cost of a Settler (30 shields and 10-20 food), and you may even be able to 'shepherd' the AI units to the tile where you want the city, by using e.g. Warriors/ Scouts/ Horses to occupy your less-favoured tiles (and bearing in mind that the AI won't settle in a CxC pattern, or directly adjacent to a foreign border, if it can do otherwise). So you'd need to let them get more than halfway to their destination before you boot them, so they get a 'free pass' across the rest of your territory.
Conversely, if you are average/weak against them, then you may prefer to just let them slog along under their own steam (moving at 1 tile per turn). That way, you'll have more time to build/move a Settler to the juicy tile yourself (using your roads at 3 tiles per turn) before the AI gets there, at which point they may just turn around and go home (or settle on a more marginal tile instead, e.g. Tundra). Also, if the parent-AI is silly enough to DoW you while their Settler is still within (striking distance of) your borders, then capturing it will give you 2 maintenance-free slave-Workers.
And of course, the boot mechanic can also work in your favour too. Say you have units out exploring near AI cities, but you want to bring them home (e.g. to upgrade them). Start heading back towards your borders and wait for the boot-order. So long as you can get your units to 'your' side of the AI's capital/core before it comes (and depending on how culturally developed the AI's core cities are), you'll get to insta-jump over some/all of the remaining intervening tiles to your border.
At worst, you get to move a Warrior 2 tiles in a single turn instead of one. At best, you could save half a dozen movement-turns (or even more, if you have several units annoying the AI) -- which could make all the difference between being able to strengthen your army sufficiently to deter an AI DoW, and not getting your units home and upgraded in time to fight off an invasion.
I remember two more quite ingenious ways the boot mechanic was leveraged by a human player:
The first one I read somewhere, but can't remember where: the human player had a unit on an all-AI continent (meaning, every tile of that continent was within the AI's cultural borders). When he got the boot, he obliged as he didn't want war with that AI, even though he wasn't sure, what would now happen to the unit: would it just remain inside the AI's borders? Would it jump all the way home to the player's home continent? Would it get disbanded?
When the IBT was over and he checked for his unit, he was quite amazed: it had jumped to the nearest neutral tile -- which happened to be on another not-yet-discovered continent that was not even reachable at that time, because it was separated by ocean and Navigation/Magnetism was not yet researched by anyone...
So he saved a lot of suicide-galleys and even already had an exploring unit over there on the new continent...!
The second one I thought up myself: basically I used the boot mechanism to "teleport" an Army from one continent to another one whithout having ships which could carry it. (We had size-3 Armies on an archipelago map, but it was still a long way to go to ships with the necessary transport capacity (Magnetism/Galleons).)
Details: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7905823#post7905823 (Unfortunately the last screenshot got lost during the past 5 years, and I no longer have it.)
Yes, the second one. But I did not invent the first one (discovering an unknown continent without suicide galleys...). And I don't remember who documented that one first?!
Puppeteer
Emperor
I had this happen rather recently, except with boats that got booted to another continent because all the close safe water tiles were owned by someone else (310 AD inside spoiler tag). Obviously I wasn't the first, but getting boats-only booted is rather rare, and I think this is the first time I had a boat sent to a new continent.
That is quote uncommon indeed. Up to now I was 100% sure that boats cannot be booted, unless they carry a military unit?! Or did you have a land unit somewhere inside their borders at the same time? If that land unit got booted, your galley would automatically get kicked out together with the land unit.
(I noticed this once, when I had a couple of workers building roads in AI territory in order to hook up one of their spare luxury resources, so I could trade it. The AI kept asking me to leave every turn, but it was only "soft orders", so I just said "yes I will" and let my workers continue... But then I accidentally moved a combat unit across the border (chasing a barb or something), and sure enough the following interturn I got a "hard order" and my workers got kicked out together with the combat unit.
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(I noticed this once, when I had a couple of workers building roads in AI territory in order to hook up one of their spare luxury resources, so I could trade it. The AI kept asking me to leave every turn, but it was only "soft orders", so I just said "yes I will" and let my workers continue... But then I accidentally moved a combat unit across the border (chasing a barb or something), and sure enough the following interturn I got a "hard order" and my workers got kicked out together with the combat unit.
)
I've had a few boats get the boot over the years. IIRC, that includes boats without military units (although some were carrying settlers). I can't recall personally having one booted across an entire ocean, but I do see the possibility for it.
On the original topic, you can effectively prevent the AI from entering your territory by forming a wall of units such that the AI cannot cross the "wall" without stepping on your units and triggering war. Unless they want war, they won't do it. The downside is that depending on the geography, this can require a lot of units, and you'll also require a galley wall deep enough to prevent the AI from going around your galleys if you want to block them by sea as well. With a large land border, this is often cost-prohibitive maintenance-wise (even if you can do it cheaply shield-wise with warriors), but with smaller borders it can be an effective containment strategy (particularly since you can set up the wall outside your borders - just keep in mind that if they build next to your wall, they may require you to move back or declare war).
On the original topic, you can effectively prevent the AI from entering your territory by forming a wall of units such that the AI cannot cross the "wall" without stepping on your units and triggering war. Unless they want war, they won't do it. The downside is that depending on the geography, this can require a lot of units, and you'll also require a galley wall deep enough to prevent the AI from going around your galleys if you want to block them by sea as well. With a large land border, this is often cost-prohibitive maintenance-wise (even if you can do it cheaply shield-wise with warriors), but with smaller borders it can be an effective containment strategy (particularly since you can set up the wall outside your borders - just keep in mind that if they build next to your wall, they may require you to move back or declare war).
ahman
Warlord
If you start isolated on an island, instead of sending troops with suicide galleys, you could even give a few citys to the first AI you meet. If you plan their placement and let the AI get some culture, you could get booted over instead of back to your territory. It won't work with very long jumps, but when you start on those annoying islands with 1 step to many to safely cross.
Puppeteer
Emperor
Two or three times I've had boats-only booted (ever). In these cases they were empty boats and no land units in their territory. I had several boats in their waters, though, as I was trying to catch up on scouting.
I actually had two workers booted once! Blew my mind. Admittedly, they were there roading so I could swiftly invade in a few turns, but the AI usually isn't that smart. But two native workers making only roads got booted (each working on their third road I think, so they had been meddling a while).
So yes: it's very rare, but the AI can and will boot empty boats alone or non-combat units alone.
