The slaves have never gotten past the PC department, and I don't imagine SEGA would sanction anything like that now.

It sounds like an interesting game you describe, but it's not really a Total War game by that point. The set-up is also probably too historically implausible to be considered. For one thing, private citizens could not and did not keep armies, nor could they simply hire other citizens as soldiers. This is why, in contemporaneous rhetoric, the fact that Octavian used his own money (privata impensa) to equip his army was such a big deal. I mean, I suppose, if you wanted to realistically simulate a family's rise to power, you can make a business sim and a legal speechmaking sim, but again, that's not a Total War game. Now if you moved the setting away from Rome and set it in a fantasy land, however, those problems would go away.