Stop players avoiding combat?

As the title says, my players talk themselves out of combat a LOT. It’s hard for me to work around cause if they say some clever stuff I don’t want to just say “yeah they attack you anyway, roll initiative”. I understand that I should let them make that choice but at least 2 other players have expressed that they want combat to use their abilities and they want to fight something. So how does one prevent the players from creating some giant scheme to avoid every combat encounter?