Hi there. I used to play Medieval1 and Rome1 pretty heavily back in the day lol. I'm 36 now and have been doing a ton of other things in life since I last played but a link to a free month of WoW brought me back to updating my PC, looking to buy a new gaming laptop because this one's old, and next thing I know...I've played 4 battles of Arena:TW aleady and have a Level 3 Germanicus with all level 3 infantry lol. Since I last played this great series of Total War, I've played years of Chess. It's clearly already helping out tremendously.

My question is this: For someone like me who's laptop right now, according to "canirunit", is more than good enough for Rome 2 - Where would I start with the series if I'm really looking for a heavy strategic and tactical challenge on the campaign map and battlefield RTS map? I'll obviously start out getting crushed but that's what I'm looking for.

Is Rome 2 a good start? I'm confused by what's come after it, too with all of these Kingdoms games, etc. I'll have to dig into what era they cover, etc. I know there's nothing on the Medieval front since M2TW and the other era that interests me most is the one Rome covers. If I just purchase Rome 2: Emperor Edition, should this be enough to get me started and serve as a good launching point right now? I know there's a lot of pay content you can buy on top of these things, along with DLC, but I don't know where to find any of it after browsing trough the totalwar website itself.

Thanks in advance for any and all help. I'm really happy to see the series and this community still thriving like this. It's been SO long and yet it's almost as if nothing has changed and everything has gotten better at the same time.