Rome Total War

Rome Total War is a RTS game from the Total War series.  The single player is about you conquering all of the Roman Empire and you are given a few areas.  The goal of the game is to control a lot of areas/cities and to be declared the Roman Emperor.  You get to manage multiple cities and build up your armies, but you also get to manage your armies first hand whenever you get into battles.  This game is very intimidating just based on its size, it starts in about 350 BC and you play through a couple hundred years of conquering, each year is divided into two turns.  Late in the game, when you control many areas, each turn can take a lot of time, especially if you don't auto-resolve battles (when one of your armies goes against an opponent's army, you hit a button so that the game randomly generates the results based on who had more and better men.)

When you play it, you get to learn a lot about the Roman Republic and how it functioned.  When playing through you are a major family from Rome and you can get elected to magistrative positions and the Senate assigns missions to you, if you complete them you gain popularity with them and if you don't, you lose popularity with them.  One of the big requirements to win the game is that you are the supreme ruler of Rome, so you must gain popularity through the way you rule and when you do certain things like defeat an enemy.

Overall I really like this game, mostly because it is a game that involves a lot of strategy and is really long and lasts for a while.  I also like how the game makes me think about everything and doesn't get boring even after many hours of gameplay.

See you next time!
Chauncey