In my first full-on game (my 3rd; 1st one I couldn't find a rhythm or expand, 2nd game I expanded to 3 cities and the AI took umbrage and destroyed my cities), I'm up to about turn 150 now. An army of 3 Cultists (Preachers) entered my region and started wandering around (perhaps to find a non-pacified village to convert, or maybe just scouting).



Anyway, when they entered, their combined health was like 800-900 and IIRC their campaign map icon was a mounted unit. I tracked them as they moved about over quite a number of turns, but then at one point I noticed that their campaign map icon had changed to a horse and box-shaped cart. When I clicked on the unit, their combined health was now something like 160.



So, what happened to them? I'm not familiar with the different races so was wondering whether they lose strength or something if they wander about and don't do...whatever it is that they do? Did they magically change places with a different unit?



I'm not confusing them with another unit as I was tracking them every turn. As they were pretty powerful when they first entered, I didn't attack them straight away and after their combined health dramatically dropped it hardly seemed worth the effort any more.



TIA :-)

From my experience, the cultist AI like to run around and explore/convert with armies composed of nearly entirely minor faction converts with a single preacher or hero to go along with them. If that's the case, it might be that they just ran out of money one turn and sold off the minor faction units, but kept the preacher there to convert things.



The cultists need at least one cultist unit (i'm not sure if heroes count) in order to convert things, so it might have decided to keep that one around instead of selling off the whole army.



Another thing might be if the army had a Roving Clans hero with it, since they're mounted. A hero's pawn is always displayed instead of any unit, so when they re-assigned the hero they'd have disappeared and the army's pawn would revert to the unit.

Ah, ty! The hero being reassigned seems most likely, esp. as this caused the icon to change.