Spent some time last night and today playing Rome: Total War.
Talk about an addictive game! I have loved computer strategy gaming since I first played since Sid Meier’s Civilization, which is still available on Ebay if you want to take a crack at it. Make sure you have a 486 with at least 8 MB of RAM though.
If you have the strategy bug like I do, the $40 retail copy is well worth it. This game is huge. My guess is that the Imperial Campaign mode would take several hundred hours to complete if you fought every one of the battles manually. I’ve been letting them auto resolve, because I prefer that to micromanaging my battles.
That’s what the little generals programmed into the game are for. Although, every now and then it is fun to pillage a city myself. It’s also interesting to note the options you get when you win a battle. You can merely occupy the city, enslave the populace, or pretty much wipe it out. It has been tempting to choose one of the latter two options, especially during my initial conquest of Brittania. Those people seem to resent my conquering their homeland quite a bit and they keep revolting.