Hello Gamedev community, I recently brainstormed an idea purely theoretical (I say purely because I have never coded or scripted from scratch, I'm about as new to this whole world of programming as you can get.) I have researched for days and haven't been able to come up with results that answer my question so I'm posting here.

I want to make a game that is based, in a very general sense, off of something like the Total War series' campaign. It's a blend of a 2D world map with a simple representation of your army (Like the Hearts of Iron series for example) but instead of the combat being carried out on a grand scale, I would want it to load a representation of the battle in RTS styled (Like I said, similar to the Total War series' campaign or Rise of Nations CTW campaign) when 2 or more armies collided. As of right now step one I believe would be to design a game that displays a map with different players and different provinces. I'm not trying to overwhelm one post with a million questions (In the finished product I will have diplomacy, resources, all that jazz) but my main focus now and question is: Where would I want to start in order to make a map (Similar to a Risk map) that has different provinces that I can move pieces to take/attack or defend from other pieces? The engine I would use to carry out the RTS combat would be the GEM 3 engine. So keeping that in mind, what would my best route be to start this? A map that displayed your armies on a large scale but then loaded the battle in the GEM 3 editor.

Thanks for any help or info, I truly have looked online and in these forums for a few days and just couldn't find where to start, and most that showed up just weren't what I was looking for.

If you've never written your own code, the best place to start is with something much much simpler than your idea. Even a risk clone would probably be a bit too hard for a new coder. Start by breaking your idea down into a very very simplified version. If you can successfully pull that off, you'll be able to apply what you learned to a better version later.

Thanks for the info. Well at this point the only engine I'm planning on using for sure is the Gem 3 editor (Or Gem 2, not sure yet) because it does small unit tactics so well. So If I could find an engine that I could build off of that has that grand scale Risk-styled game and just bridge the two where it switches back and forth that would be perfect. So at this moment, I don't even know what engine I would start with for the grand scale portion of the game, which is kind of my issue, that's why for now I only know for sure I'm using the GEM editor. But I will definitely research into GUI tutorials and the such for now. Thanks again.

If Gem3 is an actual engine and not just an editor, it should have some basic GUI abilities.

However, if they turn out to be really crappy or basic, you could resort to using another engine for it's GUI and launching Gem3 from within it. I'd avoid using 2 separate programs if possible though, it would really be more trouble than it's worth.

I don't even know what engine I would start with for the grand scale portion of the game, which is kind of my issue,

try googling "wargame engine"

info on the gem3 engine:

http://www.indiedb.com/engines/gem-3

Thanks to both for the guides in the right direction, SirWeeble I figured launching the engine from another could add complications, although with my lack of coding knowledge I didn't know for sure, I just kind of assumed. I'm going to try and avoid that if possible, and Norman thanks for the link, and the idea of googling war game engine. I'm going to do that now.

I would have to concur with SirWeeble where he said, "the best place to start is with something much much simpler than your idea."
The game you described sounds very challenging to make. I think it is a really bad idea to try and make that for a first game.

I started by programming a video game from 40 years ago, Pong.

And just slowly working my way toward the games of today.

Imagine you're posting on a film-making board, asking for similar advice.

I've never filmed anything or written a script from scratch, but I want to make something like the Hobbit. There will be shots or a large overworld, but also close-ups of the battle scenes. I'm going to start with the distant shots of the world to start, but in the finished film there will be diplomacy and battles, etc...
I have decided that I will use the Sony HXR-MC1500 HDV (or maybe Sony HXR-MC1500 HD, haven't decided).
Where should I start with these shots of the world?

If you want to make games, focus on learning your craft before diving into such a massive project. Total War, or the Hobbit, or Rise of Nations, or Hearts of Iron all cost a lot of money to make. Do you have a lot of money? On that note, how do you plan to pay the licensing fees on GEM 2/3? That's quite a large business decision. Are you planning on running a business already, or do you just want an extremely expensive hobby?

Maybe studying Sovereignty: Crown of Kings can help you create the maps you want.