How to avoid aggressive expansion

[Chinese Owned Lithium Mine]

I haven't been playing long, but I noticed in a game where I didn't play Rome, they conquered literally everything with little to no effort. I always had to wait for my AE to go down, but it didn't really help when everyone else is expanding. How can I get my AE to be something like -1.00 per month? Or is that even possible?

[spike86]

there are a lot of inventions now that reduce both the ae impact and speed up its reduction rate.
also high tyranny reduce ae by a lot

[Ramonkey]

Positive diplomatic reputation also speeds up the reduction during peace times, and there’s quite alot of inventions to stack this

[sammwich]

Don't forget to neglect your Praetor or equivalent. Always have someone with high charisma in that position, preferably 10. Make sure you have a future Praetor in training with high charisma who's building up their statesmanship. There is also the appeasing stance and conquering any territory you have a claim on generates half the AE. Diplomatic reputation reduces monthly AE.

One small advantage Rome has early on is many small nations to swallow. Every time you fully annex a nation, you can banish their former leaders for -0.5 AE, sometimes that's a net negative if they have only a couple of territories that you have claims on. If you have the patience for it, diplo-vassalization lets you eventually annex them for zero AE.

[Chinese Owned Lithium Mine]

Wow, thanks for the help, everyone. I really appreciate it.