I'm totally beginner. I know that learning programming and process of game development takes a lot of time and practice. I'm aware of that.

What I want to make?

As in the topic, I want to make grand strategy game. This is kind of game where player takes control of any country in the world while AI handles the rest. The map is divided into provinces, each with its own stats etc. Europa Universalis IV is the example game.

Where to start?

Which language should I choose? I only know JavaScript and PHP on intermediate level so maybe something with similar syntax? I also learned some basic algorithms and data structures.

And the last question, not exactly about basics.

How would you implement this kind of world map? Is this some kind of graphic file, svg?

As you can see on this video, you can apply different filters on the map to see different stats like demography, province stability, risk of revolt etc. Would it be possible to make a filter with lines (not always straight) to symbolize the roads infrastructure like this?

At least he did not ask for a MMORPG.

Same advice, start with a simple platform, or maybe and endless runner 2d. Yo will learn a lot of thinks to use in your dreamed game. 

A bit more in the strategy genre, and much simpler:

Make a trader game. You trade between cities, buying and selling goods. You have a limited amount of cash, so you need to pick the right goods to bring to the next city you'll visit. The travel can take more than one day, so you may have to stay at an Inn or setup a camp in the middle of nowhere. There may be wild animals or robbers that you have to defend for, by hiring some guards (more guards = safer, but each guard costs money).

1 : Card game

2 : Casino game

3 : Tetris game

...

17 : Strategy game

On 2/2/2019 at 4:27 PM, Sevi said:

I'm totally beginner. I know that learning programming and process of game development takes a lot of time and practice. I'm aware of that.

Trust me, if you are a beginner, just start with a smaller version of the  game you want to make and see how things work. You can always keep adding new features. It'll help you learn things.

If you start off with making a "grand strategy" game, you will find yourself overwhelmed and faced with too many things to sort out. 

This is an interesting, if massive, question.

As for your other questions, it seems to me that you're jumping far ahead.

Before the map, before the language, before the UI and all that: you have to know the model. That is, how the game acts. What provinces, what stats, how does a stat change, what makes up that stat, where this stuff is important. If a province attacks another province, does one have a defensive number, and the other province have an attacking number, and is there a random element on top of that? There is a lot of data to consider here, and how it all reacts is another thing.

So you need to model all this, and work it out. For this, you can use spreadsheets. I have worked on many games that are spreadsheeted. Most strategy games can be turned into spreadsheets. Plague Inc (and by extension Rebel Inc) are all layed out in spreadsheets, that can be imported into the game.

You can start by having column A being the names of a province, column B can be the defensive stat, column C the attacking stat. You can have random number generators to add on to these inside the spreadsheets too.

The next step to that is maybe building a pen and paper version, using your model. Where a player can play it, and you can act as the "computer" and calculating the data that moves around. This way you can design, model and test your strategy game long before you build it for real.

It's a lot of work, but it's a proven method to create brilliant strategy games.