Is it normal for AI to aggressively settle your borders?

Finally picked up AOW4 on sale, and in my second game. I've got 3 decent cities up, an outpost or two, and just eliminated & absorbed a hostile nearby neighbor's sole city. Now I've suddenly got 2 "friendly" AI settling right against my borders, with a 3rd approaching. One of them even dropped an outpost 4 tiles from my capital on a little sliver of worthless land. I'm even getting grievances for expanding my own starting cities, which will make it more difficult to declare war on the interlopers.

Is relentless expansion just the meta in this game? I played a lot of Civ6, Endless Legend & the big 3 space 4X's back in the day, and AOW4 feels more aggressive. Although maybe Im just 4x rusty.

Should I focus more on outposts after getting my 3rd city up? Am I being too picky about city locations? I realize specific advice is hard w/o screenshots or a save, but Im looking for more general advice I guess.

Loving the combat though, it's a nice change of pace from micro'ing Total War.