Wandering AI units?

[Snackwell]

In the first 1.52 game I'm playing now, two of the AIs have had small stacks wandering around my territory (and others') for most of the game. Cyrus has a war elephant and two horse archers, and Frederick has ~5 units of elephant, archer, spearman etc -- and I'm building marines, fighters, tanks and SAM infantry. They have modern units at home -- but they can't upgrade these guys because they haven't been home in 1500 years!

Anyone else seen this? I've seen the wandering settler/escort a lot, but these lost stacks are weird. I'm not at war with either of these guys and haven't been -- I was worried they were going to attack when they first showed up, but now they just wander around...

 

[Memphus]

I have also noticed this.... However after my initial panick/shock (which made me build more military good thing too silly babarbarians ) I realized it doesn't matter because upon delcaring war they get excommunicated (sp?) outside your borders.

 

[xxPOGOxx]

Honestly, that's a tactic I use sometimes if I want to keep tabs on someone I'm friendly with and have open borders. Open borders doesn't mean you can see what's going on...and why upgrade a unit if you're essentially just using him as a way to see what's going on over there. Right?

Not that this is what the AI is doing...but if you've got a unit near one of their cities (let's say on a hill top, adjecent to the city), you know a few things.
First, you know what defense that have in that city. You unit will move out if war is declared, but if you're prepared, they can't possibly have time to build up much more defense than what you know of by the time you march to the city.
Second, you know what resources they've improved and can use. For instance, you can see copper or iron or horses if you've explored that area, but unless you have a unit somewhat nearby, you don't know if they really have access to these resources or not.

And if you know what resources they have, you know what kind of units to bring. For instance, why bring a bunch of, let's say, Axemen, if they've got nothing but horse archers and fortified archers in walled cities?

And the same can be applied to well down the road into the future.

 

[Sir Janus]

Had the same problem for almost a whole game. Unfortunately it was a themed game (Honourable French) and the rules were that you were not allowed to declare war on anybody. Eventually I got so fed up that I declared war anyway just to get rid of them so couldn't submit my game. Cancelling the open borders agreement might have been a more controlled response to the situation.

At least you can now do something about the problem - I seem to recall that in original civ barbarian ships used to float around lakes for nearly 6000 years and there was very little you could do about it until late in the game.