One strategy could be to always pull one revision at a time.

Another strategy could be to pull one revision at a time but only up to some threshold (i.e. - if you are within 3 revisions of current). Beyond that threshold, maybe a 'catch-up' (pull current) makes sense.

Another strategy could be to pull up to x changesets/revisions at a time (to put a hard limit on the number of changesets integrated in each build).

What is considered excessive might be flexible depending on server resources available to you and the time it takes your projects to build.

N.B. This issue was first discussed in the forums http://forums.atlassian.com/thread.jspa?messageID=257246130