Cannot claim additional city in friend's private region

[analogrival]

A friend and I started playing in the same region recently, however I am unable to claim more than 1 city in his region.

I get the message: "This region is either private (by invite only) or this city has already been claimed.", despite the fact that originally, neither of us claimed it.

Server: NA East 1

Region: Eriador

My OriginID: AnalogRival

Tried claiming different cities, tried doing this with both of us online, tried having him send me another invite (never got it), tried having him claim and abandon, no change.

At this point we can't play this region any further

[analogrival]

Almost a week and nothing.

[inthesedreams]

Ditto.  On NA West 4 in the region Fallout Bay, I'm unable to claim any cities beyond my first one.  I get a message stating "This region is either private (by invite only) or this city has already been claimed" and can't claim any of the several unclaimed cities.  This is a private region with just myself and one other player.

[silent_jeune]

It's now 2021 and this issue still exists.  I spoke with support twice in the past 24 hours and got the "no players have reported this recently, so you should report it as a bug and someone may look at it" response.  I cleared the game cache as instructed.  Completely uninstalled the game and Origin as well as deleting residual directories for both off of the computer.  Issue persists.  Tried a different computer.  Issue persists.  I believe it's safe to state that this is NOT a computer/player issue and is a server issue.  My friend and I tried the different suggestions shared here to no avail.  Eight years and the bug still exists.

If you are the owner of the private region, there's no issue.  It's only if you are invited to the region and try to start up a second city that you get the issue.  My friend has invited me multiple times, we've tried different ways of inviting - none of the invites actually ever show up for me.  I've tried multiple ways of trying to claim a city.  No success in anything we've tried doing.  EA phone support was a complete waste of time and effort.

Server: USA EAST 1

Region: mia

Unclaimed cities: all

[silent_jeune]

It's now 2021 and this issue still exists.  I spoke with support twice in the past 24 hours and got the "no players have reported this recently, so you should report it as a bug and someone may look at it" response.  I cleared the game cache as instructed.  Completely uninstalled the game and Origin as well as deleting residual directories for both off of the computer.  Issue persists.  Tried a different computer.  Issue persists.  I believe it's safe to state that this is NOT a computer/player issue and is a server issue.  My friend and I tried the different suggestions shared here to no avail.  Eight years and the bug still exists.

If you are the owner of the private region, there's no issue.  It's only if you are invited to the region and try to start up a second city that you get the issue.  My friend has invited me multiple times, we've tried different ways of inviting - none of the invites actually ever show up for me.  I've tried multiple ways of trying to claim a city.  No success in anything we've tried doing.  EA phone support was a complete waste of time and effort.

Server: USA EAST 1

Region: mia

Unclaimed cities: all