SAN FRANCISCO -- Feral Interactive on Thursday announced plans to publish Rome: Total War Gold on the Mac in March. The 3D strategy game will be the second in the company's line of Feral Legends titles, and Feral is showing it off in their Macworld Expo booth.

The game puts players in control of one of three Roman families. They grow power through diplomacy, economic power, or military might as they move across Europe and Africa, fighting many historical and fictitious battles along the way. Rome: Total War's 3D engine is capable of displaying more than 10,000 soldiers on the same battlefield.

This Gold edition of Rome: Total War also includes the Barbarian Invasion expansion pack, which jumps ahead three centuries and allows players to defend Rome from assault or take control of a Barbarian faction bent on destroying it.

Feral said that players can preorder the game now for US$29.95, although it was not available on the company's web site as this article was published. System requirements call for Mac OS X version 10.4.8, a 1.8GHz Intel processor, 512MB of RAM, 128MB of video RAM, 3.5GB of hard drive space, and a DVD drive. It supports Intel's GMA graphics chipset.

(1/9/09: Edited at 2 PM PST to correct system requirements.)