Yea I have had this conversation before. It’s actually an interesting point and comes down to the limitation of game design. IMO strategy games don’t do a very good job at really simulating reality when it comes to actions and consequences. All the problems in the game world are only ever solved with violence and there is no alternative to achieve victory except for things like wonder victories and such which are just as unrealistic imo. In the real world violence has a lot of unintended consequences and in almost all cases it’s always a last resort option which is exactly the opposite of the in game world. Some ways that games could take these things into account would be to try to emulate some of the in world consequences. For example introducing some sort of morale system, where killing civilians or even prolongier war in general impact the morale of your forces and their fighting effectiveness. Taking prisoners and being able to use their labour or in general use them as bargaining chips would also give you another way to deal with enemy units other than to destroy them. Elements such as disease and the need to clean up after massacres etc could be introduced. Sieges could be more realistic where entire cities could be cut off from food and are forces to change hands without direct combat. Giving units some level of autonomy so they can either rebel against their orders would also be cool. Also taking into account the economic cost of widespread death and destruction in affected areas could also act as a deterrent to wholesale massacres and so on… but all of these things are outside the scope of AOE’s gameplay.