1.2 - further and farther, the Qin Dynasty??

[Connacht]

You seem to be a bit confused. I'm not discussing "huge armies entering the steppes for an invasion of a whole continent" (which continent, by the way? Is China not a part of Asia?),

Only a part of Asia doesn't mean the entire Asia, otherwise going from Hong Kong to Teheran or to Omsk would be the same as going from Madrid to Istanbul. Then we have also to consider Europe as a possible region to expand towards, during the game, since an hypotetical faction that can occupy territories in the Mid-East could also go further - as the Seleucians, for instance, in EB might do - but this is "A bit too far" (half-quote)...
The same thing would be applied to a western country or to a Eastern/Eastern Greek faction, since trying to conquer China isn't the same thing as conquering Persia or the whole Mediterranean shores. ;)

I'm discussing Chinese armies using the path that extends from the western portion of the great wall through either the north or south of the Tarim basin into the west- a route which Chinese armies historically took during the EB timeframe.

And what will be the destination of those armies? Transoxiana? Persia? Then even further? As said, it would be a suicide for armies sent there to fight and conquer. ;)
And attacking those lands would be a thing that no one in the far east would have even tried to think, because of the far distance and the low knowledge of what was there: even with some trading contacts, those were lands that the 99% of the people who heard about them only knew for light filtered echoes and didn't care much (and it's for these reasons that many myths grew amongst people in the corners of the Eurasian supercontinent about "the far exotic East/the far exotic West"), imho it's not very much for taking in consideration a conquest somewhere over there.

Which Chinese ruler would say "let's send an army west of the Tarim basin" for some lands that were almost unkown to the majority of the people in the east, except for some old merchants (and not all of them: trading routes could be also a web of connections between cities and places, with goods passing in the hands of many traders before reaching the west)? Why sending huge armies so far, if there were REAL targets in the neighborhood (and just occupied lands that needed to be garrisoned) as Korea or Indochina?
Why should a monarch think to invade really distant places which he only vaguely heard about, instead of leaving them alone and worrying about more closer, concrete, pressing troubles?
Why should a ruler summon thousands and thousands soldiers from more relevant provinces and send them to places that he hasn't any interest for, except for letting traders travel freely travel there through years? This last one is also the reason for the expedition against the _nomads_... and it would also deny any attempt to declare war against any kingdom there, since they wouldn't more establish trading relationships: why disrupting possible trading routes for waging war against somebody?
Well, which general would not consider a campaign like that just a completely crazy project?
I repeat again, an Eastern empire would mind its own businness without caring about what happens near Ekbatana/Palmyra/Persepolis and without thinking of conquer these lands; so a Western empire would mind its own one without caring about what happens in Mongolia, near the Yellow River or in Tibet. ;)

Only one army sent to fight nomads would be a thing, but a campaign with many armies for the conquest of the second half of actual EB map is another thing. It would be only a fabulous dream where mighty armies fight in the nobody's land without any really reasonable aim.

That comment was in response to this, especially the bolded part:

The only thing the country did was sending an army to defeat the steppe nomads, but the Chinese couldn't do anything else. The Romans, instead, with Traian were able to reach today's Iraqi-Iranian border and had even a possibility to go further, while the Seleucids had an empire that stretched from Asia Minor to current Afghanistan.

Your line of thinking here is clear: the Chinese couldn't do anything else other than send armies against the steppe nomads, while the Romans and the Seleucids controlled huge empires. My post was just to show that this isn't true- the Qin and Han empires expanded hugely during the EB timeframe, just like the Romans and the Macedonians. I'm just arguing that China was expansionist during this timeframe and had the capability to reach the west, but that they were not so inclined, in much the same way that Mediterranean powers could have invaded Scandinavia or the Baltics (areas which were about as accessible to and had about as much contact with the Mediterranean powers during the EB timeframe as China did with the easternmost EB factions), but they were not inclined to do so.

Nope. Read again the post. The topic was the expansion in the Mid-East, the region from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea to today's Iran. My sentence was referring to that.
While the Seleucids and Romans could expand there for some reasons, the Chinese couldn't. Nobody said that China didn't conquer anything east of the Tarim Basin. Nobody said that the Chinese weren't expansionist. And these things are irrelevant, since we were precisely talking about a conflict between West and Far East, a conflict that can't be done for many reasons and that the Chinese never attempted to engage, since the only thing the country did westward was sending an army to defeat the steppe nomads (which was not a preinvasion-of-the-West campaign nor could have forced the Chinese to consider a similar opportunity). ;)

Yet the Sabaeans are included in EB.

In fact IMHO I would have replaced them with factions like Numidia or Pergamon, leaving the southern part of Arabia only to Eleutheroi.