Changing Allegiance

Hey, I've been playing as the koinon Hellenes and recently sent a small force via sea to the Crimea area.

The sauromatians (Sp?) owned the left hand city on the penninsula and they were my allies, so i thought i'd just take the other city ( i wanted to get some interesting mercs).

Anyway, as my army approached with my young spartan general who had just settled matters with the selucides and got pontis to become a protectorate, the sauromatian city changed to koinon hellenes and had my troops in it before i even landed and forces, there wasn't even any messages saying anything.

How often does this happen? Was it just a rebellion and because i was close they decided to go with me?

Cheers for any replys.

If cities rebel, there's a chance they'll go to whatever faction resembles them most culturally, in this case, the cities on the Crimea, that's the Koinon. You could have the same with Massilia, Emporion and other, distant cities.

you know.... I've had ROME rebel to me 2X now and it has NOT rebelled back to the Romani. It always rebels to the Eleutheroi (sp).

whats going on in Central Italy????

Yeah, the thing where rebelling cities put you at war with someone is quite annoying. One time I was playing as Saba and got an alliance with Ptolemai, they took Kush, it rebelled and there was war. So I allied with Seleucia to go to war with Ptolemai, Palmyra rebelled and I went to war with Seleucia. After three Seleucid stacks marched into Arabia and 1 Ptolemai stack besieged Petra, I gave up.