Territory and overlapping base tiles -- Who owns them?

[TarMinyatur]

I recently noticed that another faction's newly established base can exert greater influence over territory than my own much larger city.

Here's the scenario: Miriam deployed a colony pod near my city. (Fair enough, I can deal with that.) What bothers me is that this new tiny base is able to work tiles that are at a distance of 2. But my city, with a population of 13, can only work on adjacent tiles. Why does Miriam get 2 and I get 1? How is this decided in the code?

I think the larger base should always exert more influence when base grids overlap. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Does a new base always get precedence?  Looks that way.

[Geo]

New bases get indeed always preference. That's the nature of the game.

[JarlWolf]

While this can be annoying, I think its a game feature-

And here is why, it is legitimate strategy to create a forward base of operations outside of a city or fortress in real life as means to besiege them:

You more or less take control of the surrounding area and the supplies that come with it; and this is a tactic I sometimes do myself against very strong AI cities that are proving too hard to capture normally. I'll produce some cities around the place and basically starve them to death; using my tiny 1+population cities to support my armies and make sure my bases at home don't suffer. And after the conflict I'll just pack up the cities and move those people elsewhere so they find more suitable territory to grow on.

[TarMinyatur]

Thanks for the replies.

As long as this feature applies predictably, I'll adjust my strategy. If I really don't like the presence of an obnoxious outpost, I can apply vendetta-avoiding countermeasures -- such as the deployment of my own colony pod, or the release of mindworms into the wild to (hopefully) find a new home in Miriam's forward base.

[Buster's Uncle]

Not that anyone's going to encounter this, because it's impossible to even try w/o cheating wildly - but BTW, the release into the wild trick does not work before the 10th turn.  That's a new discovery from about two months ago.  You can release into the wild just fine, but they just disappear; I mean, I was releasing 40+ worms in fungus around empty pop one bases, and no attacks before turn ten, at which point no problem.