A massive selling success story, praised by hundreds of reviews and even featured prominently in a regular television series, Rome: Total War was definitely the game of 2004. There’s no doubt it's fun to play, some historians said, but what exactly does it add to your understanding of history? I don't think a game based in history should ever feel necessary to present an accurate picture of its era. Games are primarily about enjoyment, and as long as something ahistorical isn't presented as fact – in which case it is intellectually fraudulent - then I’ve no problem with it.

What Rome: Total War does convey, absolutely perfectly, is the pressure for conquering generals to continuously expand. Time and again readers of European History will encounter empires, kingdoms or even warlords who maintained political support by rewarding followers with captured lands and maintained their armies through captured booty. To the modern reader, with our notions of sovereign states, war crimes and a disapproval of warring for land, the sheer necessity of conquest for ancient, medieval – or even early modern – leaders can quickly be obscured and turned simply into a quest for status.

In Rome, the player quickly comes face to face with the need to conquer, albeit through a slightly different mechanism. Recruitment is expensive, standing armies are expensive and your initial funding is slight, with growing cities frequently consuming more resources than they provide. You can improve your economy slightly and slowly by developing your lands, but the fastest and most profitable way to get money is to pillage your neighbours. After a few hours of gameplay, when you find yourself attacking and basically exterminating a formerly neutral city just to pay for your garrisons, you suddenly gain a deeper insight into why historical armies tended to be so rapacious; their need to loot has become tangible and you have slipped out of your modern morality.