Ive played 4 campaigns with different factions for about 30 years each and noticed that romans have 3 out of 4 times ignored taras, but they did take rhegion as they expanded north. No war with Carthage though...
Maks have been decimated in all 4 campaigns
AS gets crippled between Pontos (in 3 campaigns out of 4) and Ptolemy in all campaigns.
Lusitani (sp?) are expanding in every game and have nearly conquered all of iberia in 2 out of 4 campaigns, but not much expansion by gauls or germans.

I do think all the extra rebels to the north are an excellent addition. as stated above it depends if they wanna just pound their heads against the wall until it breaks or if they move away