Best weapon of ancient war

[Spoonist]

Most barbaric ancient cultures practiced martial arts during the off seasons.
This since depending on the season the handling of your food source would require different workloads. Say that your foodsource is agriculture, then during planting and harvesting you would have a heavy workload, but in between the workload would be less. That would be when most cultures would train for war and also when they would go to war.
This was/is much more effective than having a number of hours or similar.

[wolveraptor]

How can my foodsource not be agriculture? Having it be livestock alone would automatically reduce my population: more land would be needed for cows to support people than for people.

Okay, so off-season would be the beginning of the dry season, right after the monsoons, I think.

For administration: I could reduce the luxury of being a government official to almost nothing, so that few would covet the spot of ruler. My kings would not live in large palaces and halls, but rather small, middle-class houses (which was still rather rich for the time).

[tharkûn]

Okay, so off-season would be the beginning of the dry season, right after the monsoons, I think.

The off-season would also be when you need to build homes, roads, tools, etc. campaigning in the off-season also limits you objectives. Remember marching twenty miles a day was quite fast and you have limited distance you can push farmer-conscripts before you are forced to cut into the harvest.

For administration: I could reduce the luxury of being a government official to almost nothing, so that few would covet the spot of ruler. My kings would not live in large palaces and halls, but rather small, middle-class houses (which was still rather rich for the time)

Abbots in certain monastaries had far worse quality of life than that, yet their positions of authority were highly coveted.

If you do make the position so odious to hold that the wealthy turn it down, well then you can expect the intelligent people to find a willing puppet, help secure the throne by hook or by crook and then exercise authority through him. Part of the reason you lavishly reward good civil servants is that you WANT the brilliant minds in positions of authority (remember back then there was nowhere near the number of compotent candidates for holding office that exists today).

[wolveraptor]

Well in your described scenario, intelligent people still are in control, but through a puppet king rather than a direct kingship.

Administration is something I'll think about later, maybe after I finish Sun Tzu's Art of War.

[tharkûn]

Well in your described scenario, intelligent people still are in control, but through a puppet king rather than a direct kingship.

Yes but then the problem just reverts to which intelligent/rich people will control the king and they will fight amongst themselves. Not to mention the possibility of developing a Shogun/Emperor system.

The problem with leadership is always going to be the same; if you have a rock solid line of sucession then you will have idiots running the show for a while, if you try to have some type of meritocracy then you will have people trying to rig the system in their favor. At the end of the day it is virtually impossible for the monied and soldier classes to be kept out of power. These people are necessary components of a successful empire and they will know when they are being excluded from exercising power within the empire.