I went to theunderdogs.org site and found an old but really fun little game called "centurion:defender of rome".
The game has a map with provinces and you build armies of legions and can try to conquer neighboring provinces to build the roman empire. There is a battle screen where you pick a tactic and watch your legions fight it out. really cool! You also get to levy tributes on your conquered provinces to fill your coffers. To keep your citizens happy you can actually have chariot races.
It is a really fun game.
I recommend you folks download it and tell me what you think!
------------------
No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.
I played the original on VGA on my Tandy....it was a great game for it's time. RTS battles and a little provincial strategy made it fairly easy to learn.
But the battles were a little too easy and if you happen to get Scipio Africanus or any other good general at the head of your army, everybody else could kiss their ass goodbye
I recently tried to get Annals of Rome running, having played it back in the 80's on the Spectrum or Atari ST. Sadly it seems to be incompatible with my current PC. Defender of Rome sounds like a similar idea, I'll have to have a look at it.