Best 'small Successor'?

[Watchman]

But it's annoying to fight only Seleukid's stacks for years and years...

Well if you want to you can go pick a fight with the other - right next door after all - and the Macs (at the westernmost end of Asia Minor) or Sauromatae (right north of the Caucasus, and immediately reachable with Pontos once you build any kind of fleet) for variety... but I for one would first at least torch Seleukid domains all the way down to Mesopotamia just to take the pressure off your back. Note that this doesn't necessarily mean taking the territory for good - that'd likely leave you quite overstretched - but rather nuking their main recruitement centers to keep them from spamming too many nasty stacks on you. Although after that the Ptolies will probably roll in an likely go into Yellow Death mode, but at least their elite recruitement zones are at the Nile and they'll still have to rebuild the infrastructure from burned rubble...

[Prussian to the Iron]

ah yes, the scorched earth tactics. good times....goood times.....

so basically, you just blitz, tear down all buildings, then retreat to a bridge and get ready for a $@**-load of AS stacks.

[Watchman]

...but at least there won't be too many TABs or silvershield pikes in those stacks, and for a while at least you should be positively swimming in loose cash after all that pillaging and razing.
I know I've had some tense moments when a spy found out a Sele stack worrisomely approaching the valleys had one of those TAB juggernauts along - sent me on an axe-recruiting spree something fast. Thankfully they went away (probably to deal with the Parthians) after a lenghty standoff on a bridge.

[Mikhail Mengsk]

Well if you want to you can go pick a fight with the other - right next door after all - and the Macs (at the westernmost end of Asia Minor) or Sauromatae (right north of the Caucasus, and immediately reachable with Pontos once you build any kind of fleet) for variety... but I for one would first at least torch Seleukid domains all the way down to Mesopotamia just to take the pressure off your back. Note that this doesn't necessarily mean taking the territory for good - that'd likely leave you quite overstretched - but rather nuking their main recruitement centers to keep them from spamming too many nasty stacks on you. Although after that the Ptolies will probably roll in an likely go into Yellow Death mode, but at least their elite recruitement zones are at the Nile and they'll still have to rebuild the infrastructure from burned rubble...

Right

[Watchman]

Rather than "enslaving" for fun & great profit ("exterminating" in Vanilla terms) you might also consider "deporting" ("enslaving" in Vanilla) the populace of some cities to help bulk up the not-really-that-large taxpayer base back home. Fairly historical too actually; both Mithridates the Great and his in-law Tigran variously did and attempted that kind of thing when they were particularly annoyed by some locale or just needed "volunteers" to fill a newly founded city... might be particularly appropriate for Hayasdan under the excuse of "temporarily relocating" the people until you can later properly "restore legitimate Persian rule" to the region.

[Prussian to the Iron]

....im pretty sure they are still called 'exterminating' and 'enslaving' in EB. unless it didnt edit mine every time out of 4 installs on 3 different computers.....................

[Xurr]

....im pretty sure they are still called 'exterminating' and 'enslaving' in EB. unless it didnt edit mine every time out of 4 installs on 3 different computers.....................

actually eb replaces "enslave" with "expel" and "exterminate" with "enslave".

[Prussian to the Iron]

oh yeah i think those are right

[Subotan]

Irony is coincidental or unexpected, sarcasm is intentional.

Ahh, OK.