Turn off "Find Building Centres on Building" will partially solve your first problem. Unfortunately you won't ever be able to centre your view on buildings with that on, which sometimes can be useful, such as when adding districts to a city. =/

/shrug @ 2nd problem

That can be solved by selecting the option to automatically add districts with having to manually place them.

I've actually become quite cross with the auto-center when tapping a control group # which I have previously selected.

I'm accustomed to double-tapping a control group # to center my view. Centering on a single tap when I already have that group selected is just bothersome.

Here's the specific example that hits me most often. I have a battle raging with 4 or 5 control groups attacking. I hit "3" to select my Sun Jaguars, and target an opponent's Clockwork Spider...

Except Actually my view jumps half a screen to the left, and I end up clicking on the ground away from the battle. My Jaguars not only do not attack the Spider, they all turn and start running away from the battle.

Does anyone else have this difficulty?

--Mr. Strange