thats almost as dumb as deciding to go and take kyrinaica or kyrineica or whatever that puts you with direct borders with the ptolemaioi

if you win against pontos you´re going into war against the seulekids hay and probably koinon hellenon and if you´re trully lucky also against one of the gaulish factions you need to try and keep rome under control (not to mention that depending on who wins in the balkans you might have to fight them too either epeiros or either makedonia both of wich you also need mainly epeiros if they hang on to tarentum since you need as many buffers as possible to criple rome )

as for the carthies everyone said it all north africa as mines and it´s easy to subdue and even easyer to defend since nobady will attack you there (except the ptolemaiois that if you use your spies properly will never be able to subdue kyrynaika )

one of my advices is take the rich coastal cities with the mines wich you have to raise to win anyway and then rush the lusi for the control of the iberia don´t take messana 1st just build a fort on the passage and garrison it with 1 army of depleted troops that way you can fairly well decide when you´re going to kick the roman asses (when you take messana)

most importantly build your economy based on mines in north africa that will enable you to mantain 2 standing armies 1 in iberia and 1 in italy you´ll need them both