Barbarian Camps give me.... Armies?

File this under the Gah? category.

I'm playing an experimental game; there are no other Civs but I (playing Greece), and Barbarians are set to Sedentary (I'm trying to see how quickly I could build a starship).

I built some Warriors, and sent them out to explore the whole world and to get me some goodies (I got 3/4 of the Ancient Age Techs this way). Now, I never built any other forces. When I get a military unit from a goody hut, I get an Army! I've gotten 3 Armies this way, allowing me the option to build the Pentagon in 600 BC.

I'm guessing that the AI gives out military units equal to 1 step below the highest military unit on the board; since all that exists in the world are Warriors, the Army unit is the one beneath it.

Has anyone else seen this behavior?

That's very odd, I'll agree.
I have never had this behaviour. What version of Civ III are you playing? It's probably buggy. Not that that's a bad thing...
Also, were you playing with a mod of some sort?

It's a 1.17 feature. Apparently, any sort of unit (or any tech) can now pop out of those huts. As to why the armies happen a lot, it's probably set so that it can't give you a unit that you can't build, and at the beginning of the game, that's about everything but warriors, spearmen, archers, and armies, basically. For all the imbalance the Despot pop rush brought, giving free armies seems almost worse, since during the ancient era, a 3 swordsman army (or, heaven forbid, a 3 Immortal or Iroquois mounted warrior army) is more or less irresistable. And there's also the benefits of building a very early Heroic Epic (which can be triggered by successfully defending versus a barbarian), which not only is good for producing more leaders, it can also have a huge culture value if you build it early (I built one sometime before 200 BC, so its culture value will compound twice over the course of the years, and will probably be a more significant source of culture than Shakespeare's towards a 1-city culture win, assuming I build it).

A couple notes:

I'm using 1.17g (that is the brand new one, right?), with no mods

I can build Swordsman, etc., but chose not to; only Warriors. I got no other units but Armies from the Barbarian camps.


My guess is that the Camps are set to give you Best Unit - 1. So if the list looks like:
Army (since an Army has no real combat ability)
Warrior
Spearman
etc...

and all anyone has is a Warrior, then it'll give you an Army. If someone has a Spearman, you'll get a Warrior, and so on. Of course, if you're playing with other Civs, once they build something better than a Warrior you can no longer get Armies.

I wonder what effect special units have (I'm thinking specifically of the Explorer)...maybe I'll test.