You'll probably have some others point it out too, but the Romans are not a faction... they're actually 4 factions, allied (for a while). I'll bet that you'll get some debate that Egypt is a stronger civ. And in my own opinion, I find the Greeks and Selucids to be overpowered. Really, the Human is the deciding factor.

Also, people play the game in different ways, with the goal of having fun in their own way. It is good to see you are so quick at subjugating Egypt in only 25 years! Personally, I like a fast paced game, too (my own Seles had hit the showers and retired with 50 provinces + Rome a decade before your Egyptians bit the dust ).

Maybe you can talk about your own Sele strategies. In mine, I used Diplomacy to the max, and the Scythed Chariot was just a monster, routing almost all before it. I felt the Selucids began with too much territory, and that enabled very rapid penetration into the Iberian Pennisula. The Egyptians were pretty much delt a death blow by the Nile when 1,000 of my guys went against 2,000 of theirs. I used the dogpile on their chariots, which were the only real threat in the few battles. The Scythed Chariots and cavalry turned the tide after crossing the bridge, and then destroyed almost all enemy before they could exit the battlefield. Egyptian remnants died as a race soon thereafter. Once, however, I tried chariots in the streets of a city assault, and wound up with amok chariots, LOL.

So I personally consider the Selucids one of the easiest three civs; they are balanced, have good finances, expansive territory, wonders, neighbors ripe for the picking...

^^^No kidding wartrain, I thought I was in for a hard time when all 5 of my neighbours attacked me at once, but I had enough financial and territorial resources to deal with them all. Now I own all of asia minor and am awash in money.

I guess the first thing I have to wonder is how anybody manages to expand so quickly! Wartrain, are you just exceptionally suited to engineering full routs with much smaller armies? How do you defend your frontiers with such rapid expansion?

Destroy the enemy before they get to you.

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I will play a farewell 1.2 game and post details and explanations for how I do fast expansion... I've been meaning to do it for a long time, but most of my free time was spent mostly in tech posts lately. Then things begin anew with learning the 1.5/1.6 patch.

About routs with smaller armies, in general, that is the way I learned to play. It becomes a necessity when you are expanding fast. If you fight comfortably, I find I have to slow down expansion to a methodical plodding. No, I don't defend behind me, beyond basic trash occupation units. For battle, in most cases, I select only certain troops (leaving what some might consider 'good' units out), and enter battle at a numerical disadvantage. That's the way I get generals on demand, and that's what helps my generals get stars fast, which usually accelerates the expansion rate. I believe in making the other poor guys die for their cause, and use every effort to ensure the enemy AI units never leave the field alive.

I usually go for a medium-to-leasurely pace, building up my economy and culture (keep the peons happy), after I start pulling in sizable profits per turn, then I start looking at expansion. With my current game with the Greeks, however, I don't have that luxury. First job was to kick the Scipii and Carthage out of Sicily...not that hard if you manage everything yourself and never auto-resolve anything. I'm moving slowly, but I've got all of Sicily and am starting to capture the boot.
Back on topic, I also found the roman factions difficult to maintain good income, whereas with the more eastern factions, money is never a problem, especially for Seleucids or Egypt...Macedon and Greece can make quite the profit as well.

When I played as the Greeks i found it almost impossible to capture Sicily. Cathage attacked me right away and i killed all their elephants before they touched me with my archers. But even with everything I had i still couldnt take sicily.