2 questions: big cities money & peace with ptolemies

Hi, I got two pratical questions bout things annoying me in my current (arche seleukeia) campaign :)

1st, seemingly no matter what I do, the larger a city is, the more money it USES instead of MAKES. In real life, taking Alexandria, Seleuceia, Carthage or Memphis would be far more beneficial than taking some Bactrian towns. But all of these cities give some -4000 gold, while the Bactrian towns give, well, +200. So in my campaign, you actually get a BETTER economy from taking Bactria than from taking Egypt, which is supposed to be one of the worlds wealthiest states at the moment??? am I doin somethin wrong, misunderstanding something, or do I need to build some building I havent noticed?

2nd. Currently, I'd like to try a campaign where I abandon eastern Seleucid provinces, to get a smaller realm consisting of Syria, Mesopotamia and MAYBE Asia Minor (i hate being big, its too easy). I also DONT want to conquer Egypt, but NEITHER do I wish to be conquered by it. Theoretically I could just guard Syria real well and fight their invading armies for an eternity, BUT Id also like to have a kind of fleet, so I can intervene in Greece and Italy from my relative safety in Asia. But since the Ptolemies are so strong at sea, that also means that I'd have to deal with them first.
Only obvious solution: I should make peace. BUT the ptolemies HATE me so much, that I am, from turn 1, completely unable to improve our relationship. I can't even give them gifts of 100 Mnai, and then hope that I could, by doing that for long enough, make friends with them. Because even the smallest gift (as well as the largest, Ive tried to give away provinces in Asia Minor which I didnt want anyway) is DENIED. Theyre so suspicious, that I cant even give them 100 Mnai...
Is there anyway AT ALL to stop the war between Seleucids & Ptolemies WITHOUT actually wiping them out? Cos, as mentioned before, I'd like Egypt to remain as a southern neighbour to me, and I don't want the superpower status that a conquest of the land has given me in earlier games...

1. Well, you see, a larger city also has to pay more money to the military upkeep, and so it just seems like it is making less moeny while it really is making a lot more.

2. Peace with Ptolemies is like saying beautiful and ugly, unless you are on the other side of the map you won´t have peace with them, no matter what you do. Believe me, I´ve tried.

1) Ahhh. That makes SO MUCH MORE sense :) thx

2) That's sad. That means I'll have to hit them as fast as possible, so that the wars in Italy & Greece, which I so long to join, won't be over before I'm ready. I get your point now that you mention it. I once had the Ptolemies cornered in one settlement (which I had already exterminated a few turns before) in the middle of Arabia, while all of the original lands of the Seleucids (except useless eastern ones) & Ptolemies were under my command. And I didn't even have any other enemies than the Ptolemies, and my entire army surrounded that one last town of theirs. And did they surrender? No!

Why is this actually? As far as I know about the story of the Syrian Wars between the Seleucids and Ptolemies, they WERE capable of making peace, even if they (like Rome/Carthage) weren't exactly the most obvious friends... If EB should be realistic, wouldnt it make more sense, that they accepted peace in situations like the one I described above?
Not that it matters much, Im just curious:beam:

It's just the way the game works. Look up the forced diplomacy mod. It might work.