Banished/Defeated Rival Wizard bug

[ChaosSpawn]

I haven't gotten to the bottom of what is happening, but I will continue to play-test to try to make a determination.

First let me explain what happened in the original/how it should play out:
If you manage to capture all of a rival wizard's remaining cities while they are banished and have not completed casting the "spell of return", they are instantly defeated once you capture their last viable city. You would get the "So and So wizard has been defeated" message with their portrait display and your familiar would loot their tower and might find a spell or two if you share any of the same books.
On the overworld map all of their units would disband and their controlled nodes would become neutral, I.E. whatever spirits were melded to the node would disappear.

I've completed a full game where I banished 3 of the 4 wizards and took all of their cities before casting the spell of mastery late game to banish the final wizard. I did not receive the rival "Defeated" message for indeterminate amount of turns (it was random) for the 3 that I defeated, and their nodes remained melded until I sent spirits to meld them to my wizard's reserves. This could create a tremendous amount of irritation/frustration should the rival meld the nodes with guardian spirits for example. Lastly, 1 of the 3 wizards managed to cast the spell of return before I conquered his empire and I did not receive a notification or animation. I think in the original there was an animation where their tower popped into the middle one of their remaining cities - the same one that played if you had completed the spell of return and selected a city to return to. Rather, I discovered that the rival wizard was back in the game during a battle with a remaining army stack when the wizard started casting during battle. This is no good, there should be a pop-up or animation or some other notification of their return.

In my current game I banished rival Ariel right off the bat on a small map, and captured her last city more than 20 turns prior to my current turn. I have used the "earth lore" spell to uncover the fog of war, there is no remaining/hidden city on either plane. Her portrait is still on the diplomacy screen, and I have not received a "defeated" message. In addition, I have had to meld to all of her nodes and under her portrait info she continues to accrue mana into her reserves. Finally, she has a buffed swordsman guarding the last node despite not having any city/towns to support it's food upkeep.

I'm not sure if she will need to run out of mana from casting "spell of return" despite the fact that she has nowhere to return to. I am going to continue to monitor her info screen after I eliminate her unit and meld this last node.

For what it's worth.