Do free cities offensively attack? I had one send units into my land, decided to save and see if they will attack and then just marched around doing nothing.
Yeah they attack, they effectively act like barbarian cities for the most part, only a bit more tame. In my first R&F game I saw cities flip to free a lot on the continent across the world from me, the AI kept trying to expand to places it shouldn't have. I sailed my battleships over there and bombarded the rebel cities and units for easy XP, lol! I could have captured them but it would have been very hard to hold onto them so I didn't bother.