Farsox

Wow, thank you for sharing your work!  It looks great, and I'm sure that will be a big help.

Thanks for the suggestion.  I wanted to avoid 3D initially, because I was planning to do my own artwork.  I am pretty comfortable with vector/raster graphics but am not familiar with any of the 3D rendering programs.  Plus, I like the style of the isometric games.  

Dispite my ambitions, I will heed your advice and give Unity a try.  There should be a good collection of  pregenerated 3D models, especially in the Unity community.

I am an absolute beginner at this, and I know that accomplishing my goals will take a long time and a lot of patience;  however, I am hoping to save some time by coming here and asking for some initial advice.

I know there are a lot of options for developing games these days, but I'm not sure what would be the best route for the type of game that I want to develop.

I want to create a squad-based tactics game using an isometric view (like X-com or Jagged Alliance).  I'm not sure if this is a feasible venture in vector graphics or if sprites would be the way to go.  I own a copy of Flash CS4, but would be willing to explore C++ and Microsoft's GDK (or even Basic) if that would be better.  If there are any suggestions for the best way to go about all of this, I would greatly appreciate it.  Also, if anyone could point me to some tips on developing AI for a game like this, that would be helpful.