Liberating cities with no contact

[Sporknife]

So, i'm playing a game as the dutch where i took out china early then colonized a nice little island (theres nobody on it). When going into the domestic advisor, i notice that one of my cities wants to be liberated. WTH? i have no contact with anyone. I end up meeting mansa musa, and he founded hinduism. I obviously didnt found it in that city, so that means that he has some more cities elsewhere. I check the diplomacy screen and i find that he has 5 more cities ! IMO, this is a major bug.

Screenshots :

Spoiler :

edit : this is a tectonics map, at monarch difficulty. I'm running bts 3.19.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It was probably closer to him than your capitol, although IMO it shouldn't be prompting us to give cities away all the time (sometimes I settle horrible junkers on AI borders and gift them for diplo, but players doing this know what they're doing and gift it away the same turn).

 

[Sporknife]

It was probably closer to him than your capitol, although IMO it shouldn't be prompting us to give cities away all the time (sometimes I settle horrible junkers on AI borders and gift them for diplo, but players doing this know what they're doing and gift it away the same turn).

Yeah, but i still had no contact with him, so it's quite illogical that my cities would want to be in his empire, no?

Also, when i found him later he had founded every religion except confu (that ones mine )

 

[obsolete]

It was probably closer to him than your capitol,

That really is a stupid mechanic. You would THINK something like this should be culture-based. I also get this nonsense all the time, especially on archipellago maps.