Hey, me and my friends have never designed games and have minimal programming experience, largely based in java. However, we have had an idea for a very AI based game, and as we have been toying with the idea of creating said game for several years now, i felt like it was time to start working.

The game would basically be like the civilization games, only real time, and far less player controlled. The player would have choices about the climate of the planet, species dominance, fertility, etc. However, instead of directly creating a successful civilization, the player would simply create an environment in which several AI nations would develop. I could explain more in depth, but that is not the purpose of this post.

As i said before, my friends and I have very minimal knowledge of game developing, that said, we have already created some base equations that would decide the spread and growth of your species. I programmed these in a java, creating a kind of text based version of this game, but i haven't gotten past the creation of nations using random intrigal equations, and the said civilizations forming aggressive or passive personalities. I was hoping that one of the more experienced game developers on this forum could walk me through/ help me in creating a more complex and at least slightly visual version of my game, which i could then hand off (hopefully) to a larger company or more experienced developer to complete.

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Thanks!

I'm not sure quite what you're looking for, but this might get a better response in Help Wanted.

Best of luck with your project.

6677, Not really, though. The player would control the temperature of the environment and other similar factors, which would in turn affect the type of cultures that evolve, for example, cold environment means the AI hunts rather than farms, hunting makes them develop better weapons, which then makes them more warlike in the future.

It would be similar to those games, but the player would have more of an immersed or realistic experience, being able to zoom in and watch progression, as well as battles. Not to mention the species would always be human, but the AI culture and goal would be based around the environment, which the player controls. It may not be popular, but as i see it, if this is my dream game, there have got to be others who feel the same. I am also considering adding things such as natural disasters, and more direct player involvement. This would attract players who like feeling like gods... which includes most of humanity.

I'm going to suggest that you develop the text-based game to completion. Most likely, nobody outside of your circle will play it, but if you really put effort into it, it will be an incredibly cool in-group project. Not only that, you will have at least a chance of success. The kinds of complexity you are imagining are not easily realized (not impossible either) in a graphical environment. Combined with the facts that you have effectively zero game development experience (I'm not trying to be negative, but there is no other way to put that) and that you have made an assumption about the game development industry that probably won't hold up (that some company out there will pick up your prototype and make a game out of it) and you basically have a recipe for failure.
Now, if you are very interested in game development and just want to learn, there's no reason you can't start teaching yourself about graphics (using say, C# and XNA, or C++ and OGRE), and game physics, and animation, and content pipelines, and for that matter, artificial intelligence (if you can easily write and solve an equation to determine some behavior, it's unlikely the AI will be very interesting or emergent). And while you are learning, you could try to make some progress on the game idea.
Honestly though, if what you know is basic java and your goal is to play this game, not to make it, or make money from it, stick with what you know (you might use a basic GUI to organize the info on a civ, instead of pure CLI). It won't be pretty, but you are already imagining the epic battles and sprawling civs in your head anyway, what's wrong with that? Anyway, good luck whichever route you choose.