Rightfully joining

In my game as Germany, something strange happens. Every turn I get one or two of the cities that want to join another empire. Oddly, that empire has no culture in that city.

I get a message along the lines of "the people of Colonge rightfully ask to join the Sumerian empire". And then I'm given a choice to agree, disagree or view the city (obviously I tell them no way). It happens to every city exept the capital (yet! - the game is running). Even cities that I founded myself and are nowhere near anyone else and still the people ask to join another empire.

I haven't found any adverse effects but its really strange. Does anyone else have this? Sounds to me like a bug (since the other empire has no culture in the cities).

 

could this be espionage?

 

Espionage? Maybe. I haven't been exploring espionage that much.
My espionage rating however, is pretty high. I keep on catching spies nearly every turn. So they are definitly out there. I guess its possible.

Can one of my spies do the same to someone elses town? Hmmm... I'll try that one. Thanks.

 

If Sumeria is your vassal and they are closer to Sumer's capital than yours, they may do it.

 

Vassal? Maybe, Sumeria is my vassal. That may be a factor.
It also happens with Spain. Spain is not my vassal, but then I just took over some of their cities. Its not the cultural borders though, the only Spanish cities left are very far way. And the formerly Spanish people don't want to join the next bordering empire.

It does seem that distance is not a factor. I happened to Cologne which is just 5 tiles from my capital at Berlin (3rd city to built). Sumeria is much farther away.

Anyway, there may be somehing about this vassal idea. This is my second BtS game. My first was playing the Dutch. People didn't want to join other empires then, but I didn't have a vassal either. Perhaps a coincidence, perhaps not. Or maybe there is a little more to having vassals than I know of.
Might this be happening to colonies aswell? Haven't made one of those yet.

 

I been having that too.

I had afew cities on this island, and they were wanting to join my vassals, even if they are on the other side of the world, no where near their cities.

 

I'll see if I can provide a save, but that may be a little bit difficult. I can certainly do a screenie of the message and then one showing the culture of the city. This is certainly a bug - I have cities on islands halfway around the planet from my voluntary vassals the Khmers who frequently request to join that civ - no Khmer culture, no chance this should happen. Clearly the game considers vassals the same as colonies for the purposes of cities yearning to defect, which I believe is an unintended consequence of the way the colony system works ATM.

I also have other cities with no Khmer culture wishing to defect, but since these cities are close to the Khmers' and some of the tiles within 3 spaces of the city square have some Khmer cultural input (despite still being majority mine), it at least makes some sense.

 

I had a weird situation occur to me in a game in which I conquered most of Japan, then made them my vassal. There was a city quite far within my (newly redrawn) borders that had a decent amount of javanese culture and kept bugging me about rejoining japan, so finally i said "screw it, i'm tired of clicking no, just go join them" and turned the city over to japan. Twenty or thirty turns in the future, the city was completely surrounded by my culture, and revolted to join my civ. a few turns after they joined me, they were AGAIN asking to join japan. what the hell?

 

This happens with me - and it can't be espionage as their points have nothing on mine and no nearby countries have coastal cities, and only one foreign ship - a workboat (from a landlocked neighbour - I have no idea where it came from)- has ever been in my borders. I set up cities across the Atlantic or on Iceland - both times I'm closer than my vassal France and we're both separated from my new cities by a big ocean - yet still the cities, 100% English, extremely far away from France, 'rightfully' want to join the French Empire the turn I build them.