Problem is as many people have said before is the type of game it is.
Rome: Total War doesn't interest me. I don't like huge battle is RTS's if you do thats fine but I'd much rather stay with my Prism Tanks and leave it at that. Sims 2 as many people have said before appeals to a much larger group of people.
Granted many of you think its shallow and not a proper hardcore game or just because its cool, whatever I don't care. The sims is one of those games that appeals to you.
Take SimCity 2000, that game had me hooked, for some unexplicable reason. Somehow if your city failed it was a a huge problem and YOUR FAULT! and thats what makes it so damn memorable.
Sims is really, really boring and pointless. Peeing, eating and sleeping in a computer game? I have to do that all day long in the real world. The same problem occurs in Harvest Moon... it's just not fun to do those sort of things virtually.