Re: Which Rome Total War is more historically accurate Rome 1 or Rome 2?
Well there is no doubt that everyone is entitled to his opinion, in such subjectively determined matters. After all, I recognize the fact that my focus on the terrible representation of the Middle East and onomastics is just a minority view. To be honest, what startles me the most about the second issue is that, nowadays, a quick browse of the relevant Wikipedia articles would sufficiently cover any need for variety, without having to employ the obviously anachronistic names of Akkadian monarchs and Monophysite monks. Anyway, my rant, aside, let's close with a small note about the Imperium system. Both Rome I and Medieval II featured an identical mechanism, which also undermined further territorial expansion with penalties concerning corruption and public order. Personally, I prefer the older version, because it is more dynamic and affects every region separately, based not on a bar automatically filled with each new annexation, but on the geographic distance between the capital and the provincial centers of power. It just felt more realistic to me.
P.S. I understand that the Skype diplomacy looks now more practical, but, especially in Antiquity, that's not how diplomacy worked. Organising and manning embassies was a very complicated procedure (about which, we are quite familiar, thanks to epigraphic testimony), which the diplomat-agents of the older games represented rather accurately. Very frequently, the journey of the ambassadors was intercepted by a neutral or hostile entity, which thus managed to completely interrupt the diplomatic relations between two states. The most typical example is the massacre of the delegation of the Peloponnesian League, tasked to seal an alliance between it and the Achaemenid Empire, by the Athenias, as narrated by Thucydides.