I chose the "Son of a UC Soldier" start so I was automatically hostile. I walked up to him and only option was to attack. I knocked him out, brought him to the hub and put him in a cage, let him out, attack, rinse repeat. Brought his dead body back to the ruin. Won't let me gain ownership of the ruin. What did I do wrong? Do I need to be able to have the dialogue with the holy paladin to be able to gain ownership?

I understand this. The trick is to wait with the reload for the save to be complete :)
I once was too fast and had only my buildings left but all characters were missing.

@y-man Since I've had complaints on my other pages that saving and reloading can cause issues I won't be adding that to the description. Though personally I've never had any issues with it myself so I kinda think its more of a user error situation then anything.

Hi ! I think to save and reload the game should help with the worldstate changing to your base.
So you don't need to run away and accidently the buildings swith to other towns.