Between attrition (lost in battle), needing to leave troops behind to control conquered territory, and longer supply lines, shouldn’t the armies have gotten significantly thinner and weaker.
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The basic premise of the question is a bit flawed because that’s not always the case. But on a basic level the main factor is that if they’re gaining more land, it usually means that they’ve caused very significant losses to the defending side. If the defenders have lost troops, equipment, strategic positions and/or important locations such as manufacturing hubs or population centers from which they can no longer replenish their ranks, it can reach a point where the defenders have simply been pushed past the point beyond which they can recover, and as such this can snowball into them no longer being able to mount a good defense and the attackers can capitalise on that and rapidly expand their controlled territory. There’s also a morale aspect because an army that’s seeing massive advances and victories has a lot more confidence than defenders who lose their nerve as they see this seemingly unstoppable force coming towards them.
However this is far from the norm. Throughout history many armies have made the mistake of overextending themselves beyond their logistical capabilities. Napoleon Bonaparte had famously said “an army marches on its stomach” which can mean many things. On a surface level it means that an army can only be effective and have high morale when they’re eating well, but on a broader level it also speaks about the basic logistical capabilities of an army. If you can’t reliably supply your troops with food and equipment past a certain point, then any gains you make past that you cannot actually hold. This is a very dangerous pitfall for an army to find themselves in. As conquest expands outwards you need more and more combat troops, and for every single combat soldier in the front lines you need a lot more support troops. This is called the “tooth to tail ratio”, and the number can be anything from as low as 1:2 to 7:10 or even more. This means that the more you expand your support and logistical needs expand exponentially both in man power and equipment needs.
So basically unless an attacking force can deal a swift and decisive blow to the defenders, from which they cannot recover, expansion is actually a bad thing because it stretches an army’s capabilities thin.
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