Fantasy story idea

[gigabytelord]

Hello all,

I was was wonder if I could get some advice concerning an idea I have for a game here on the forum. Cue a Copy/paste from an IM I sent to Thanas when first asking about this.

I've found a map online that was created for a mod in civilizations. This map has the land masses of Westeros, Essos, Sothoryos, Middle Earth, Numenor, Tamriel, Akavir and Azeroth on it.

Now for this particular idea Numenor, Tamriel, Akavir and Azeroth are just extra or uninhabited lands (actually I'm thinking about just excluding them completely unless you guys have differing opinions). The big four are Westeros, Essos, Sothoryos and Middle Earth. The idea it's self was that a SDer, any SDer, chooses a faction from any of the four continents to control. Once the choice has been made he/she has to stick to it. In the cases where two or more people want to choose the same civ then it's treated in a first come first serve fashion. Unless the two+ players come to some sort of power sharing deal. i.e. one player is protector of the realm while another takes control of, lets say House Lannister.

Every several/few days I would post an update to the timeline using the decisions of the players to determine the course of events letting everyone know what's going on in this world (public info of course) Politics, war, backstabbing, trade, all of these things are allowed but within reason for the universes used. I would also throw random events into the mix every once in while i.e. natural disasters, plagues and the like.

Each player would be required to keep track their characters and armies movements and the condition of their cities or nations. I would like to give everyone as much freedom of choice as possible, however, there would be a sort of end goal, technological advancement and survival.

Now it's just an idea and there are a many areas where I'm lacking experience and know-how and I'm completely open to suggestions and help. This is my first time doing something like this.
One of the things that was bugging me is how would you determine the out come of battles? Would you use an already preexisting house rule or maybe discuss the event between yourselves in private and come to an agreed outcome and then post the events for public consumption? Also there's the issue of the map. This is the map I'm referring to and as you can see it's Civ 5 map so accuracy is hazy at best. I'm going to see if I can find some good maps of LoTR and GoT and perhaps edit them together preferably with political borders already there. However my picture editing skills are virtually non-existent so it may not be the highest quality.

I was originally going to post this as a RAR in Fantasy but Thanas told me it would work better here. So I throw myself into your good graces.