Armchair generals arise! Build your cities, recruit and equip your armies and then set forth to conquer the known world. Which at this point is Europe and the Mediterranean.
Rome Total War is a computer game for PC from publishers Creative Assembly that allows the player to empire build in a big way. The game has two distinct parts, strategic and tactical. Strategic play involves managing your factions settlements and directing armies into position on a turn-by-turn basis. If (inevitably) armies clash then the game becomes tactical and you control the units of your army into battle, giving orders across a gods-eye view of the battlefield.
The strategic side is as deep and complex as you’d like, played on a glorious map of the Roman world showing settlements, geography and armies. Tactical battles zoom-in to show the battlefield terrain, the assembled armies and their actions down to individual soldiers.
Good strategy pays to the point where weaker armies, by choosing when and where they fight can defeat larger factions while the battlefield offers reasonable accuracy: soldiers get tired, lose morale, charging horses into spearmen is suicide and so on.
Overall it provides a serious, if rather lengthy, challenge that keeps you returning for one more “if I flanked the enemy by hiding in the woods…” go.