Any general training tips to save my campaign?

Hello, I've been following the forums and playing the mod on and off for a while now.

After getting bored with the eye-candy of MTW2 I decided to play a Roman campaign using Quintus' house rules (I found them great to play with RTR, which I like too, but his tips for garrisons just do not work in EB).

During my huge lull between the first Punic war and the conquest of Illyria, even my best efforts to keep my generals toned failed and they are all pretty useless. I used the time to get the Polybian reforms, replace my legions and attempt a little divide and conquer diplomacy, using fleets to curb my treasury. But my best general has only 1 star, and that was hard fought for.

Finally I took my chance to invade Illyria. Epirus and Greece had done their usual trampling of Macedonia, and then a war between those two had resulted in Epirus being a Greek vassal.

Illyria was easy. Epirote mismanagment caused a rebellion in Dalmatia so I waltzed in there, and the army in Illyria Hellenike wasn't very tough either.

With Epirus and Greece now at war with me (Greece defending her protectorate?), I entertained ideas of restoring the Macedonian homeland to Macedon, now more or less a Selukid satrap in Pergamum. But Epirus' remaining stacks are all led by 6-7 star martial gods. I sent a full stack raid in, representing a polybian legion and managed to get a single stack to attack me. I slightly outnumbered him and successfully used my advantage to ambush the right flank and distrupt the Epirote line before he got to my main army.

Those Thracian skirmishers and three units of pikemen that did hit my polybian legion with their general had run across the map, were exhausted but still thrashed me!

I'm not crying because I lost- no fun in steam rolling- but I do think the morale bonus of a seven star general helped them a bit there, and they have plenty where he came from (and I'm definitley hiring Thracian skirmishers). So any advice on how to get a better general would be appreciated.