Rome Total War

Has anybody taken the time to complete the Imperial Campaign while at the same time managing all settlements and fighting all battles on the battle map? I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to strategy games and as such I like to manage all things in the game.

I've had this one campaign game going now for 6 months with a reasonable amount of time devoted to the game per week. I would only be about half-way to conquering all lands and I haven't even begun to fight the other family memebers yet! Bloody lengthy but excellent game, I tell you.

Really, really looking forward to Medieval Total War 2. Should be excellent.

I play on the Harder levels of the game and find it to be a reasonable challenge. Certainly, in certain situations, the AI is a little weak, particularly when the player defends against their attack.

I must admit, I did give the game a break for a while after I first got it as it did seem a trifle repetitive. I think it was the end goal of simply conquering every province, you know. That doesn't appeal to me but the game is still a very good technical achievement in my book.

I like the depth and the balance of RTS battles matched with the strategic elements of the map - building settlements up, army customisation etc..