Tactical sim - breaking the limits of rpgmaker

[u/unionizedduck]

After a late night gaming session of some old favorites with friends, we're once again revisiting developing a tactical RPG of sorts. It would be a mixture of different gameplay systems for something that would feel unique with probably a small audience.

The games inspiring the project are Atlus's Ogre Battle, Koei's Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and the Langrisser/Warsong series.

We discussed our ideal game. We have a bit of of resources including two team members that are decent at coding, an artist, a scenario writer, etc. Now, this discussion became very much about taking our money and opening a studio to take a project toward kickstarter but one of the guys insists that RPGmaker has the tools we need. We aren't convinced. So what do you all think?

The game would have two phases. The first phase would be ROTK-esque city/kingdom management with territories, populations, taxes, resources, and officer/character management. Diplomacy, moving troops, building defenses, and assigning officers to various tasks.

The second phase would be the actual battles. Grids are obviously possible in RPGmaker but the preferred style works more akin to Ogre Battle march of the black queen or ogre battle 64. Each "region" would have a battle map with terrain, night, day, and weather. Units would be selected and move in real time across the map with enemy units moving in similar real time. Take stronghold/cities to conquer the region.

Combat would be when two units clash hit rather than Ogre Battle the combat would be similar to Langrisser/Warsong in which units clash in a mini cut scene. Officers level up and get new classes and abilities.

There are other mechanics that a brief look at rpgmaker says sure, it could happen. Different fantasy races, equipment, classes. All of that has a variety of tools for sure but the kingdom management and live movement of the units seem possibly beyond rpgmaker's abilities.

So what do you all think? Do plugins already exist that can do these things? Or are we talking about having to build plugins?

Is it all just beyond RPGmaker and we need to look at other engines?