I only bought Rome in 2007 after picking it up second hand in a two-for-£10 deal. At the time I think it was the other game I wanted more, but since Rome was effectively free I thought I'd get.

Before that, I had played a bit of Shogun (and still own a copy), but found it too hard. My strategy gaming background is much more turn-based, so I was sceptical of my ability to control 20 units in real time.

Having started playing Rome (as the Julii) I realised that it wasn't as hard as remembered (I had no idea at this point how overpowered the Roman factions were in vanilla). I played that first Julii campaign through to completion, but then had a look to see if there were any decent mods around as I had heard that this was a strength of the TW games.

That led me to EB, which was then at the 0.8-something stage. I downloaded it and picked the Casse for my first campaign as I thought it would be fun to fight in Britain. In retrospect this might not have been the best of ideas as I'm not sure their roster was complete at that stage and I think I failed to grasp the reform concept properly (plus it might have still been date-based at that time).

Suffice to say I spent a long time conquering first Britain, then Gaul and then Iberia using little more than basic spearmen and FMs.

I stopped playing for a bit after that figuring I'd come back when the mod was finished. When I found out that 1.0 had been released I got it and thought I'd give someone else a try. Got engrossed in a Romani campaign, worked out how good phalanxes were and so switched to Baktria and have been trying out all the other factions since.

In all I must have logged solid weeks of EB, but only a few days worth of vanilla. I tried playing it again a few months ago and found that it's still fun, but insubstantial.

I've also found it quite hard to take seriously any TW game or mod that starts me off with a positive income.

Didn't mean to write quite so much for this, but thought it was appropriate given the immense amount of enjoyment this mod has given me. I'm already planning my next moves in my embryonic Epeiros campaign.