Is there any way to make battles more strategically decisive?

[Morte66]

Perhaps this thread has been derailed from its intended topic?

There's a lot of historical analysis of the tiny minutiae of the battles of the Seleukid empire, but little discussion about how battles could be made more decisive in the game. If indeed this would be a valid thing to do. Etc.

I think it's about money. The AI factions approach unlimited money for practical purposes, i.e their unit building is limited by how many barracks they have not by what they can pay for. Once you get into a real war with them, they can and frequently will build one unit per city per turn in the war zone. Oh, and they'll hire mercs too. If you conquer Rome over ten years, you'll fight more troops than their entire starting population whilst thinking "this is silly" every half an hour.

So the sensible thing to do is to conquer them quickly, giving them the minimum time to build units. You want to go from not fighting Rome at all to a massive invasion and conquest of Rome at breakneck speed. Then ideally you take several years to thoroughly consolidate your new lands, freeing up your field/siege armies from population control. Then do it all to again to somebody else several years later. So you advance across the map in spurts, not a steady trickle.

Of course this is not always possible in practice, but the closer you can get the better. You can sometimes get clever about it. E.g. the AI basically won't make peace when it has a land frontier; so if your land frontier is one province that's hard to hold, sell it to the Ptolemies then send your best diplomat up to a lowly Roman captain asking for a ceasefire. At least find defensible chokepoints on the map and conquer up to those, giving you a chance to consolidate behind them.

So, I don't think you can make individual battles more decisive, RTW diplomacy and EB finances/recruiting don't work that way. But there is some hope of making your wars more decisive. Try to only start wars you can finish. Try to avoid others starting wars by not putting weak armies/garrisons near their strong ones (the AI can't resist).