Major powers not fighting

[Hstio]

Just finished a game to the end and in the entire time, with the exception of the early game implosion of the Antigonids, there were maybe 5 wars between the major powers. Rome never fought Carthage or the Macedonians and the Seleucid fought Maurya once. It's almost impossible as a smaller power to gain ground if the majors never fight. Since they can't seem to fall apart either, the map becomes 5-6 very large unassailable blobs which isn't a lot of fun.

[ProgramTheta]

In my games the Antigonids dont even fall lol. They usually lose a chunk of syria to egypt, another chunk to the seleucids, pergamon breaks free, and they make up for it all by full annexing macedon and Thrace.

[Razor Feather]

My games have seen a fair amount of back and forth between various great powers, and greece espeically tends to change hands between them a couple times in a game. Remember that every campaign is different, and even with limited player intervention things will play out in all sorts of ways across multiple games. You may have just had a run where the ai just sort of... never felt anyone else was weak enough to attack. Also, do keep in mind that you can try to harrass a great power to weaken them enough that others delcare on them, then giving you an opportunity to be more aggresive.

[Baby Beluga]

Unfortunately, at a certain point, if the major powers have not gone to war yet then they will likely never go to war. They will take the path of least resistance and that means eating all of the nearby tribes because they are completely helpless. This only seems to change if during an early war, land is gained that is adjacent to an opponent. Say, Rome gets a tiny piece of Africa from Carthage or Egypt takes a bite out of Macedon. At no point will one power try to keep the other in check by making alliances or using guarantees to block their progression. Which makes sense because the game will end well before any of the major powers finishes eating their tiny, pointless neighbors. Maybe it's just the casus belli system. If you check any nation in the diplomacy tab you'll notice that they always have a valid casus belli on every nation they border and many that they don't.

It would be nice if the tribes noticed the existential threat but they'll probably need a future fifteen dollar DLC to be able to fight back. Or if the constant rebellions that each AI seems to go through did something other than give all of their remaining nobles a MASSIVE loyalty buff for many years. Because once that buff fades, they're just going to have another civil war.

[Petrovich2049]

Diplomacy is very simple in this game so there is actually no goal for ai to go to war except to blob. Initial wars between successors are scripted, otherwise AI only goes to war against weaker opponent to blob. Best case other major power tries to third party but it's very rare case