Especially Altar seems to be addictted to spam cities next to your borders and repeat that if that city has grown a little bit to the point it can build a new settlement, heh it sometimes even parks a pioneer ready to start the settlement for 50+ turns.

It would be more logical that if a city is getting swamped by another city its influence should tople ownership of the city with everything inside it.

Also the AI should not be building near to another influence zone (say 5 square (was going to type hex) radius should be free.