My favorite rts game, I am suggesting it because it has a cult following and is hailed as one of the greatest army simulations of all time, I spent at least 300 hours on it during my mid-teens and would try out many different formations and battles, I remember doing a reenactment of the Battle of Thermopylae and posting it on youtube, it was so much fun... but I digress I lost my copy a couple years ago ;(

Convince Sega to sign with GOG. I myself mostly played mods for it. Viking Invasion 2 was excellent, and Fourth Age was awesome. I was also fond of Rome Medieval. Pity that of the two mods focused on Asia/Japan, one was old and frequently broken and the other was too pretty to run on my computer.

You can get it pretty cheap (with all the expansions) on Amazon ($20) or just Rome and BI for $10 (a better deal because Alexander was not that great).

But yeah, I fondly remember RTW, it was a huge boost to the series in terms of popularity and was a great game. There were issues, mostly in terms of Romans being so powerful and many units being a bit silly, but it was overall quite good. And with mods the life of the game extends to even now for some people.

I've been playing the TW series since Shogun 1 and loved all of the iterations (though I never did get Napoleon, I was too hurt after Empire being a let down unfortunately). I definitely spent the most hours on Med1 back in the day, it was such an excellent game involving so much depth and character.

It's a great game. It brought many great things to the Total War series. The soundtrack is outstanding too.

That said, Medieval 2 took that and refined it. If I went back to either game now it would be M2 simply because it's so much better balanced for a long campaign.

Yeah, it was and still is pretty good. Barbarian Invasion was kind of a let down though, still good but it seemed they took out more content than they put in and yes, Alexander was pretty much a 10 hour expansion of the game. Its real legacy is in user made mods, of which there are literally hundreds. These keep the game up-to-date and enjoyable. I wasn't as much a fan of Medieval 2, still enjoyed it mind you, but Empires and Napoleon were closer to the glory that was Rome. I haven't played Shogun 2 and won't anytime soon because its specs are way out there, but hopefully it will live up to its legacy.

But what is with all these sequels Creative Assembly? The originals were great because they were original. There are so many interesting points in history that you don't need to keep remaking the same 4 time periods over and over again!

What's the great problem ?
You can get "Rome Total War Complete" at both GamersGate and Steam for respectively €14.95 / €14.99

http://www.gamersgate.com/DDB-ROMETWC/rome-total-war-complete-bundle

http://store.steampowered.com/sub/463/

(I bought it cheaper for €5.98 when the games were on sale a while back)

I've spent waaay too much time playing RTW. Still loads of fun. Although the AI during sieges can be a pain.

You might be interested in checking out the indie game Hegemony.

It's a slightly different take on this sort of rts. The first edition focused on ancient Macedonia, and Philip rather than Alexander. It got really difficult in a hurry, though - seems like everyone starts attacking you on all fronts relentlessly.

I think the new gold version (which I haven't played yet) expands gameplay to other ancient Greek city-states as well. (Wonder, also, if they rebalanced the AI's aggression.)

Hmmm I guess I will check it out on GamersGate thanks for the info! But yeah it was my favorite rts game ever and I have played over 20 easily, and like Navagon mentioned the soundtrack is AMAZING, The song Forever is especially breathtaking.