The great citadel whack-a-mole

I’m getting to the endgame finally here, did the moonshot super bugged map mission just now. The thing is that citadels are popping up like mushrooms. A haven gets whacked, I can’t do much about 30 strength invasion, it’s all over except for the shouting by the time I get the warning. The crew holds 30 seconds silent break for the victims and does an area scan.

And we’ve got a question mark. Go explore it, surprise, it’s a citadel. Go kill the scylla, go back home. Next haven gets whacked by 30 invasion somewhere else. Repeat. I’m at 100 relationship with everyone, I’ve destroyed so many citadels.

Are the citadels just supposed to pop up directly without going nest/lair first? I’m pretty sure they appear on recently scanned areas so it’s a brand new development.

To add to the problem is by this time the Geoscape is mostly green from previous scans that is very hard to figure out where one needs to re-scan (see https://phoenixpoint.canny.io/feedback/p/successful-base-defense-should-reveal-attacking-base-location).