I would say go north sheerly to deal with the Scythians. If you leave them for too long they start going mongol horde on you....
Scythians are a bad idea for an initial focus, dear viewers. Their cities are too far away. Your army needs ~five turns to get to the enemy. Their attacks can be easily stopped with a ranged garrison at Kotais. Eventually a merc spearmen + all archer band guarding the north bridge. Guarding Scythian lands is a pain too, you have to cover bridges. Three of them while at that. And..
well..
Unless you fight the roman empire already, no huge armies will advance through Scythia.
And once you fight roman empire, Scythian lands are too painful to defend. Not to mention the capital distance. Very large provinces are overrated.
Esspecially the Pontus, have you ever seen what happens if they manage to get lucky against Egypt?
Yeah, i had fought a super-Pontus as Greeks once. Greeks are GREEKS though. My Greek force layout looked like this
Needless to say only siege weapons could ever breach our wall of spears, arrows, jevelins and general cavalry. As Armenia things will be tougher.. But we have them horses and them arrows.
I'm going to sack the Parthian city that is in our view, and then advance my strike force to take Susa (slightly to the south, very, very strong defensive position). Afterwards, we're doing what the next vote results are! Pontus? Seleucid? Egypt? New poll has been added!
Attacking Pontus is quite easy, and we can take the entire peninsula eventually. This will boost our naval trade and not stretch us out at all. This will however cause Greece and in time Seleucid, Macedonian and Brutii to zerg us. It's the best possible move in my opinion. If we build up a nice navy, we can stop the amphibious strikes, and with Kotais securing north side, focus ENTIRELY on south.
Attacking Seleucid is easy in the beginning. Seleucids fight the Egyptians, and sometimes even Pontus. Having a third foe sack their cities will cause them to crumble. This will however stretch our lines, and taunt Pontus, Egypt and Numidians to attack us. We'd have to defend many cities at once. At this moment it would be unwise.
Attacking Egypt is a gamble. Egypt can be taken out early if you team up with Seleucids. The battle will be bloody, and we can not afford to have any casualties, but should we succeed, the strongest enemy in the region would be wiped out..
We would however be extremely stretched out, and half the world would declare war on us the second Egypt is no more.
Also.. If you push Egypt too hard, it's possible that they declare ceasefire with Seleucids. Which is followed by Seleucids attacking Armenia.. This can go incredibly good. This can go incredibly bad. It's a gamble, and diplomacy in the game is borked and unpredictable.
Attacking Scythia is a bad idea. Our growth will be halted for many turns, while our foes build up. Scythian lands are simply too large with no cities whatsoever. Scythians are also a pathetic foe that can be taken out just with our stone-gatherers later on.
Oi.
New update tomorrow, after i'm back from work.