Weird ransacking behavior?

[u/Boring_Treacle_7321]

Hi can someone describe to me why this happened?

Turn 1: Ransacking city and nextdoor admin center, done in 1 turn each
Turn 2:
-City gets ransacked fine, Admin center gets ransacked
-but a new outpost is built right under my unit by black.(black was the previous owner)
-Then when my unit retreats they immediately upgrade it to a city :(

?????????
This game makes me so confused sometimes, how could an outpost be built under my unit?

[u/mgrada93]

I think what’s happened here, is when you ransack the city, it changes all the territories that made that city back into outposts with admin centres. The ransack of the city must have completed slightly before the ransack of the nearby admin centre (likely due to combat strength of the ransacking army/ies) therefore reverting that admin centre to an outpost, which reset the ransack timer. You then retreat your army from the outpost, which allowed the AI to upgrade it to a city. Very janky, but that’s my best guess!

[u/Boring_Treacle_7321 → u/mgrada93]

Yeah I think that's it, went back and ransacked them separately and it acted like you would normally expect. A little frustrating!

[u/mgrada93 → u/Boring_Treacle_7321]

Glad you sorted it! I find humankind unique to a lot of other strategy/4x games in that the AI takes its’ turn at the same time as the player, and with the AI being able to do things infinitely faster than the player, it can result in some weird things happening at the start of turns that can’t really be countered because you can never be faster than them!