Total War: Rome

As with previous games in the Total War series, Rome: Total War has two primary modes of play: a turn-based, single-player campaign that takes place on an overhead map of the world and a real-time battle system that occurs on 3D battlefields.

Control over territory in the game is represented by capturing and holding a settlement in that territory. New cities are conquered by either training soldiers in cities that are already in the player's control and then using those soldiers to besiege enemy cities or by bribing the city into switching sides. Apart from simply expanding one's faction, cities can have positive or negative effects on a nation. For example, well-managed cities can provide the faction that control them with valuable tax income, but poorly managed cities may cost the player more money in maintenance than they make in taxes.

A demo featuring a playable version of the Battle of River Trebia, with the player taking the role of the general Hannibal, was released on August 23, 2004, and is freely available for download.

Prior to release, a preliminary version of the game engine was used in two series of TV programs: Decisive Battles by the History Channel, where it was used to recreate famous historical battles, and Time Commanders by BBC Two, where teams of novice non-gamers commanded ancient armies to replay key battles of antiquity. Military historians fine-tuned the game engine specifically for these television shows, ensuring maximum historical accuracy. Both series also used the same music track as the battles in Rome: Total War.

According to The NPD Group, Rome: Total War was the 20th-best-selling computer game of 2004. It maintained this position on NPD's annual computer game sales chart for the following year. 8 million by August 2006. At the time, this led Edge to declare it the country's 40th-best-selling computer game, and best-selling Total War title, released since January 2000.

3 million units in the United States by August 2006. By 2013, Rome: Total War alone had totaled 876,000 sales in the region. It also received a "Platinum" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 300,000 copies in the United Kingdom.