Best Language for sim city type features embedded in a website

Hey,

Im wondering what the best language would be to build a website that has features like sim city but a lot more basic. Basically i want the ability to attach buildings in a village which people can click on, upon entering the building they will be on a website information page and not the village anymore but they can then exit that building and return to the village/city and click on other buildings. I dont need to be able to build people but do need the ability for people to build their own buildings.

I was hoping to design the website in PHP but not sure what ill use to build the city, again it will be pretty basic, like simcity or cityville, will have streets, trees and buildings?

Im basically learning languages and rather than learn the language from scratch im going to learn the basics as im semi familiar with basic programming and then do this project, at each step ill come across things that will require me to study the language in more depth so basically learn as i go along as i find its a good way to learn.

Want to make sure im learning the right languages, PHP sounds the best for the website from what i read but im not sure what language will integrate well with PHP for the city, any recommendations?

Ideally there is some 3rd party software out there i can just embed into the website but if not i guess ill have to learn another language to program it.

One other option is to do something a bit like google maps where when they enter a building you can still see the map at the bottom but its much smaller so they can still navigate around. I also wanted to be able to display information, like a noticeboard type thing that updates while there exploring the village.

Just thinking out loud but could i simplify it by just making a 3d image, allow the ability for panning the image like google maps or just have plain old left/right/up/down buttons to navigate and then make the different building clickable with a hyperlink hotspot.

The only problem would be that if a user wanted to create a building it would require me to manually update the image as opposed to it being automated, i would prefer automated but might simplify it a lot

I would suggest you use flash and action script (pardon me if I have the name of the flash programming langauge wrong) However if you use PHP you will need to probably use some sort of front end langauge if you want anything to act like it's real time to autorun a php page after a given interval for example like a auto refresh page done by java script. Also for graphics php has the GD libraries. I've used that in the past, not sure if you'll get nice 3d graphics out of it I've only used it for 2d graphics and graphics manipulations.

So I guess what I'm saying is if you use PHP you will likely need javascript to help make the game appear more real time, to auto refresh at given intervals is my best suggestion. Now I don't claim to be a Guru like some of the people making 6 figs as a php programmer, but I do know I am fairly familiar with PHP and javascript. If however your not wanting to create a somewhat realtime game and your wanting to make something more like a simcity in the form of a mud such as say theninjarpg dot com. Then you can disregard the suggestion that you would need to learn some javascript as well.