Questions about Nationalist Rebel behavior

[Nerva]

I'm playing a 3.03 game with the POPs of Darkness mod as USA, and in the middle of fighting a war for Canada with UK, where a major part of my strategy is to blockade all of greater Canada and drive the UK's War Exhaustion to 100%. Since 3.04 is going to come out, I decided to "skip ahead" in my war to try and verify that the UK will actually be brought to terms (so that next time when I start a 3.04 game I'll know the war isn't a hopeless effort), and I saw some strange behavior when Canadian Nationalist Rebels appeared.

No surprise, they popped up in Southern Ontario and immediately sieged and controlled several provinces, then moved on to siege other provinces. I am close to 100% certain it was Canadian Nationalist Rebels that sieged the province of Caribou, which is owned by the UK but has a core for Maritime Union. After it was controlled for I'm assuming the requisite 30 days, the country of Maritime Union became independent. This is odd, since it wasn't done by Maritime Union Nationalist Rebels, it was done by Canadian Nationalist Rebels. Can anyone explain this behavior? Do rebels just randomly go after nearby provinces owned by the country they're rebelling against, and if there's a core to be liberated, it is? Or does the fact both Canada and Maritime Union have Anglo-Canadian as their primary culture have something to do with it?

After the rebels controlled perhaps 50% of Canada, I started sieging the other half. Then something else odd happened -- instead of targeting nearby provinces, the rebels started moving west to siege parts of Columbia that I controlled -- and after they took control of Vancouver Island and New Westminster, the rebels mysteriously vanished and all their controlled provinces reverted back to UK control. One thing that did change in the intervening time was a switch by UK from a Whig government to a Conservative government, which increased the "agrees with ruling party" militancy modifier from -0.10 to -0.15 for many Canadian POPs -- so I am wondering if that reduced militancy below 10 and caused the rebels to disband? Can rebellions end that way?

In general, I am wondering if Canadian Nationalist Rebels, left to run wild, will cause all the parts of greater Canada to declare independence -- even Rupert's Land? Since I'm playing POPs of Darkness mod, those independent Canadian countries will (except for Quebec) petition for statehood in the USA -- so could I pick up almost all of greater Canada without needing to siege anything myself?

 

[Nerva]

Update: OK, after letting the game run a few times to watch them, I'm even more baffled by the Canadian Nationalist Rebel AI. For starters, they don't seem all that concerned with liberating... Canada... They'll siege/control the provinces they spawn in, but after that, they keep going after USA-controlled provinces in Maritimes and Columbia. After controlling all of Maritimes, they went back and started sieging various uncontrolled provinces with cores for Canada, but they would break the sieges over and over, and randomly wander from province to province.

But, the UK switching from Whig to Conservative government does reduce Militancy in greater Canada, and I'm wondering if perhaps the rebels are "attracted" to provinces with high Militancy, and over time as Militancy drops, the rebels give up on various provinces.

 

[Nerva]

2nd Update: OK, it looks like Canadian Nationalist Rebels, Maritime Union Nationalist Rebels, etc. will only appear in provinces that have Anglo-Canadian POPs with Anglo-Canadian cores (Canada, Maritime Union, etc.), and they will seek to liberate only provinces that have Anglo-Canadian POPs, and will do so even if the particular cores are different (i.e. Canadian rebels will liberate Maritime Union provinces because they're both Anglo-Canadian).

So, the upshot is that since countries will only declare independence if rebels control all the country's cores (owned by UK), this means that Canada, Newfoundland, Rupert's Land, and Columbia will never declare independence, because they contain provinces that have Anglo-Canadian cores but no Anglo-Canadian POPs (for some reason in some provinces there are British POPs instead of Anglo-Canadian), so rebels will never seek to control those provinces and the independence event will never fire. The only parts of greater Canada that can actually go independent are Maritime Union and Quebec (with Quebec Nationalist Rebels).