Sorry to kind of drop a points bomb with this post, but I have also know completed 144 28mm Carthaginian citizen spearmen. My process for troops like these is to do a massive production line with each step of the modeling process, so they were finally completed all at once.
The vast majority of the figures are from various victrix sets (and some wargames Atlantic bitz), with 6 figures drawn from the Foundry/Casting room miniatures Carthage range to add a little character and a few other figures from the plastic Carthaginians from Agema miniatures.
Each unit has 36 figures, these are for To the Strongest, where they would likely be classified as raw spearmen. I have gone with deep units to give them a little more staying power. Raw spearmen tend to be speed bumps at the best of times in the rules, so the extra depth should hopefully allow them to survive a little longer and let the elephants and cavalry win the day.
I also think it is the historical deployment.
For the shields I mainly went with the thureos style shields as I was aiming for a punic wars look, however there are a variety of shield types mixed in to represent a more ad hoc nature to the units. Thureos was recorded as being used in third punic war in the literary accounts, and there are North African monuments with the shield as well. According to Spanish historian Quesada Sanz the Carthaginians likely introduced large, oval shields to the Iberians, so I think Thureos is reasonable, especially as that shield type seemed to majorly come into fashion across the Med In this time.
If I was purely going for a Sicilian Wars style army I would have used all aspis shields, and in fact I kind of wish I did as the citizen infantry played a major role in those wars against Syracuse.
I think these troops could do equally well as less well equipped Libyan foot. I think that armor tends to be over represented by wargamers in the ancient period, I think the vast majority of troops would have lacked significant armor in any army from the period.
One source of inspiration for these was the Truceless or Mercenary War were Libyan subjects along with mercenaries revolted against the Carthaginians due to a lack of pay after the first punic war. At times during this conflict every able-bodied Carthaginain who could shake a spear was drafted into the ranks, so I included a number of very poorly equipped fellows in the ranks. At the same time, the levy would be a cross-section of society, so included some well armored officers and troops to represent the wealthier classes.
I used figures from a lot of different victrix sets for these units - some purpose bought, other figures were sprue left overs that could be reasonably pressed into service.
For helmets, the montefortino style is the one that I used most, but there are a range of hellenistic types as well as the conical helm often associated with Carthage. The montefortino seemed to be manufactured in scale and widely used by Carthage and distributed to her mercenaries, so this made the most sense to me as head gear.
Duncan Head in the book "Armies of the Punic and Macedonian Wars" has a recreation of a Carthaginian citizen in that book - it seems like every figure manufacturer has basically copied that look for every single figure sold as a Carthaginian citizen. I personally think that the citizen body would look a little more varied and diverse.
This project was absolutely a speed paint for better or for worse. The qualities of the figures varies pretty dramatically in some cases, depending on the mood I was feeling when painting.
A lot of the back rank figures required some conversion work to get the upright spears - the Victrix citizen set only has attacking poses, so some surgery was required for the back ranks.
I usually organize the figures on popsicle sticks, with 4 figures to a stick, and paint in batches of 16 or 4 sticks. For these simple ancient figures with only a few different colors I find I can comfortably due 16 in around an hour, not counting drying times for washes. I focus on one tunic color per day and then mixed all the figures together to get random blends of tunics for the final units. I also undercoat with a skeleton bone color primer as I find that gives and excellent base for off-white tunics and the spear shafts.
For basing these deep units, I stuck the first two ranks on the bases, then applied the ground cover, and then did the following ranks, to make applying the basing material a little less messy on the figures.