repeat exterminations

i have not, but has anyone tried a repeat extermination strategy. by that i mean, say you take a major city like alexandria, or carthage or athens. its at the edge of your empire so you exterminate. then you goad into rebellion and exterminate again. and do so for 3-4 successive turns reducing it to a minor town or so. that way you don't have to factor having to exterminate in about 10 turns after you first get it, you just keep butchering until they reach the lowest population of 400 people. it seems silly as i type this, but i wonder if this would work in game and you would basically never have to worry about unrest there ever again.

Did this on Alexandria, Carthage and Jerusalem.

Not so many times in a row, of course.
Twice is usually sufficient, three times if the population is really big. When there is only 1 out of 16 or 64 people left, even a huge city isn't big anymore ^^

Took the city next to Cordoba, Carthago Nova or something? Knowing it to be a problem, I exterminated rather than my usual enslave with barbarians (cultural difference). They rebelled. Who rebelled? There were only 402 left in their population! They killed over 300 legionaires, archers, and cav! This same crap went on for four rounds or so, until I was able to build an ampitheater to passify them. By the time the rebellions were over, I had lost half my army and couldn't replenish 'cause there just wasn't a polulation to draw from. Now, that just has to be a glitch.

Good one Ovaat!, IMHO extermination of big cities is almost too good, I bribed the scipii(as Julii early on) just before they were about to take Carthage(my first game), took Carthage and struggled to keep it down as I enslaved it the first time. Finally got sick of it and let it rebel and retook immediately and solved all my unruly problems giving a significant boost in profit. To be recommended for any good Roman Governor!