Rome: Total War, sound purchase?

[UOcUK Poopscoop]

Not played a RTS game in years and I love Roman history.

Does real strategy work in this game, flanking etc. or is it just a case of throwing as much as you can at an enemy like old RTS games?

Also, are there any good mods for it?

Thanks for taking the time to read.

P.S. I see you can get a .ini file to enable widescreen support, how well does this work?