Have been thinking a while about this now, and can't seem to understand the auto-spawn of thieves.
So far i've done a few trades, think i got thief-popped 1/4 of the times (not counting first 2 runs on lvl 20, thought I would be safe in a big high lvl caravan

)
Anyways, it's annoying as hell to have 3-4 high level thieves lurking around you, and you can't get away, especially when riding a camel. Was lvl 26 on last run, and the thieves they spawned were red, so they have been a lot higher (i think).
Now i haven't played thief before, nor have i participated in higher level thief/trader/hunter battles (since i'm only 2x), but why do thieves spawn npc-thieves? If you would take away that ability, 1* popping would become far less commen, if not disappear?
Of course I'm realistic, and i guess this has been suggested before since it's so obvious (though i couldn't find any topics about it here lately), so this is more a question about 'what use have NPC thieves for thieves'?
Sure, it might help in killing the trader/hunters, but i doubt any of those see (equal) leveled thieves as a threat, since they occur on normal trades as well. Atm i think auto-spawn thieves are too abused for 1* popping than anything else.