OCC caravan defense strategy

[Tizzy]

First off, I'm not a very good OCC player, although I enjoy it.
I haven't managed to crack it at deity yet, although I can at lower levels.
I hit upon this idea when the Carthaginians built a city a couple of sqaures away from mine a few games ago.
When I moved a normal unit into an overlapping square to protect my territory, they demanded I withdraw my troops. Not wanting to get into a war I couldn't win, I complied, and they moved in, upsetting my workers.
A few turns later when they left the square open, my caravan bound for their town stuck on the square.
As caravans aren't offensive units, they let it sit there quite happily.
Taking this one step further, placing caravans on all your city squares therefore stops anyone upsetting your workers, and also (being a Democracy) stops diplos/spies getting to your town to steal techs etc
Add the UN, and they can't demand end game techs from you either, ensuring an easier early launch!

I've tried this trick too but then an aggressive AI comes with this fighters and start slaughtering my poor caravans/freights

However, this is a nice trick if you have nice, friendly AI's around..

[Tizzy]

I've used it in a few games, and no AI has declared war on me yet, with or without the UN.

[Julius Brenzaida]

In the AI headstart sucession game, made more difficult for the human player, we can't communicate with the AI and are then "technically" at war with them. Our neighborhood friends are the Mongols. They bribe cities and kill units but let the caravans past ! The AI clearly has not the same attitude with caravans as with other units. But in some games, I've lost caravans, though most of the time they were in a ship that was sunk. Can't the camels swim a little ?