Questions for starting a new campaign

Hello, I just finished a great 72 year Macedonian campaign and am eager to start my next one playing as the Romans. There are a few things I'd like to see if there is a solution for before starting though to enhance the gameplay and any help will be greatly appreciated, as I have very little knowledge about how to script/change anything within EB. Just to note that I'll be using MarcusAureliusAntoninus's city mod which will hopefully solve the nasty experience of seeing steppe provinces over 20,000 people in 210.

1) How would one go about making the steppe provinces more profitable/less likely to revolt? The steppe factions always seem to die off easily and often these cities are not worth the trouble to take them for other factions (example in my game: Bactria owned 7 steppe provinces north/west of the Jaxartes and they would lose one to rebellions every other turn or so. These provinces also made very little income).

2) On a somewhat similar note, is there any way to reduce/eliminate the distance penalty on settlement happiness or is that hard coded? This is a part of the problem in the ability to hold steppe provinces and also creates extreme annoyances when trying to manage a large empire (not difficulty but time annoyances). While it certainly is historically accurate, managing a large empire takes forever and really gets tedious after a few turns of it.

3) Is the siege time hard coded as well? Waiting often times 2-2 1/2 years to assault something that might be loosely guarded but is still a big annoyance to invade is rather annoying, and the fact that the a.i will usually just wait till the last quarter and mount a sally and still be able to fight effectively despite what one would suppose to be under virtual starvation. I don't believe this is rather accurate at all for siege lengths either. Alexander took Tyre in 7 months and that city was extremely difficult to take as well; a rare exception. While I can get around this by waiting an appropriate time and then using auto_win, the computer does not have such an ability and this slows them down greatly. Being able to change this will improve things immensely as well.

4) Is there any way to get the A.I to accept diplomatic offers no matter what? the command force_diplomacy does not work and because I plan to isolate myself on the Italian peninsula for 30-50 years to give the rest of the world some time to get started, I would like not having to enter drawn out wars and be too strong too early. I tried this in my previous Macedonian campaign and in a rather rapid succession I had more or less the entire world declaring war on me and refusing to accept any type of peace until I destroyed them. The only offer I got for peace, after destroying the 45+ province Seleucids and reducing them to 1-2 towns in Arabia, is this (Bactria gave a similar one with half the monetary amount):

https://img83.imageshack.us/img83/3110/rome16eo8.th.jpg

Lastly, a random side question from my readings: Why is the river Jaxartes referred to in the texts of Arrian and Q. Curtius Rufus as the Tanais? The Tanais is as far as I know the river don north of the Caucasus and it's not likely it's a simple confusion either, both in that it's found in these sources (and possibly others; my readings on this are somewhat limited so far) and the description of the situation of the Scythians and Alexander's campaign route it would only make sense of it being the Jaxartes. On a similar note, how much knowledge did the Greeks of the time have of the northern and eastern parts of the Black Sea? What primary sources would be most useful on this subject?

Again, any help is much appreciated! I have greatly enjoyed this game so far and I definitely plan to continue playing it.