Well, gave up on the Byzantine Empire.
Or at least decided to keep the save and try it again later.
For now I have decided to make the world England!
On the shores of the River Themes the town of London was founded near an abundant supply of livestock. The English people will never want for food.
During the peaceful early years English explorers found the landscape to be plush and green in the west, while rocky in the east. Town elders planned an expansion of the growing city, and a faction chose instead to take their families north to establish a new sister city on a northern river and named it Leeds.
They were surprised to find other peoples living to the north. These Scotsmen had set up a nation of their own in the far northern Highlands and Henry King of the English was pleased to learn that peace was desired by all. Over the next several generations, both peoples expanded peacefully with England establishing 4 cities and the Scots three.
In the year 1200 BC (in their world this date would have no meaning of course) a prophet was born among the residents of Leeds. Surrounded by the ancient ruins of Stonehenge he and his disciples declared the end of paganism. A monotheistic religion was founded, observing the one true god. Catholicism was born! Quickly this new found faith spread among the cities of the British Isle bringing common culture and religion to the Scots and English. Across the channel to the south, word has been brought that disciples of Catholicism have brought word of the faith to the lands of France, Castile, Aragon, the greater Germanic states, Italia, and Scandinavia.
While the English and Scots tended to their herds of cattle and sheep in peace and fathers in London celebrate the opening of the Curia word has come of a new faith born somewhere in the east that has caused religious wars to breakout somewhere in the Germanic states. Our friends the Swedes, Lithuania and Poland have converted to this new Orthodoxy and word of Muslim Ottoman army advances have also been heard on the wind.
By 500 BC, with war and other faiths ravaging the continent, how long will peace remain in England?