Fighting the yellow death now with my Roman legions. It's going to be a long and hard war.

But I agree that the Ptolies sometimes get out of control. In my latest campaign the AS are gone by the year 210. The Ptolies are very well capable of totally destroying the AS and absorbing all their provinces, while on a single occasion I had when AS were actually beating the Ptolies they've failed to launch any serious attack on Egypt proper.

AS is at a huge disadvantage here. Ptolies have only one enemy that is the AS, while the AS has to fight on many fronts. Core Ptolie lands are not threatened by anything, but successful Ptolie attack in Asia Minor gives them access to core AS regions.

I don't know how it could be balanced, because historically Ptolies were never that strong.