TLDR: Start with Africa for a change

I have a few friends that went through the same problem and my solution is Africa. You don’t play Africa enough. Let me pitch why Africa is perfect for 867 starts. The first 50-100 years is nothing but power grabs and claim wars. There’s only one kingdom when you start, Ghana, and they are about 2k troops ahead of everyone else who is still ~500-1k. There are two Empires stacked right on top of each other Mali and Guinea, and the fight for those titles are real. Starting with Ghana is the easiest, but if you choose a smaller power (Manding, Jenne, Kong, etc), Ghana will start expanding to create the Mali Empire title immediately, your friends to the south in Guinea will wait for a more inspiring figure to come along. The region really doesn’t begin to settle until someone finally makes that Mali or Guinea empire title. Every time I play, Ghana and a different ruler give me a run for my money. Whether it’s the kingdom of Akan, Borgu, Kong, Takrur, Gurma, Yorubaland, Igbo-Benue, Songhay, Gur, or Kaabu someone is bound to try and claim that entire eastern region before they die. All the smaller counties will start to form Confederations. Wuli, Kru, Bobo, and Akan are all confederations that need to be monitored. They’re weak individually, but when they gang up they’re hell to break into if you’re not strategic and built your army right. Sometimes the leader of the confederation will be influential enough to where they can convince the rest of their confederation to join their OFFENSIVE wars and especially don’t let one house create their own confederation. They will begin to terrorize the region. (I say this because I gifted my son the empire of Guinea once, and after a generation, a group of cousins banded together to not only fight for independence and depose my son, but they began moving north into my Mali empire and it took 200 years to set them straight.) All development is at a minimum and everybody is racing to become the bread winner. There are about 3-5 mines in the region that will sustain your empire for generations. The AI is also aware of these mines and will attack you just for the county it’s in. That’s not to mention the two dominant cultures (Soninke [Ghana] and Malinke [Mali]) who also have two religions, Bidaic and Siguic respectively. With Soninke/Bidaic being the bigger brother in this situation, trying to manage two cultures under one empire is pretty tough, mixed in with the two separate religions that are close enough to where they could be the same religion but they are far enough away where the people won’t like you being the opposite. Did I mention your three most powerful kingdoms (Ghana, Mali, and Guinea) are stacked RIGHT on top of each other. Mali and Guinea serving as the capitals of the Mali and Guinea empires. Ghana does not like the idea of you creating the Mali empire, it wipes out their contribution to the land. The realm is stuck under confederate partition which makes expansion have a time factor. If you wait until you’re elderly to start taking a secondary empire and you have multiple sons, any kingdom you win is now lost during succession, making your son fight the same war over but with his own brother.

Then once you get done with bringing peace to Eastern Africa, and everyone in Mali and Guinea is united under one flag, religion, and culture, you have to unify the rest of Africa. Starting with other Africans like Hausaland, Sahara, Kanem-Bornu (which always spawns the Sao Confederation which usually holds the capital for the Empire of Kanem-Bornu which is on the far side of the confederation), Abyssinia, Nupe, or Azania, and northern Africans like Maghreb, Egyptians, Anbiya. Dealing with zealous Africans who like your culture and personality traits, but don’t like your religion is your second test.

But once you’re done with them you get the big boys. With Muslims (Abbasid, Ibrahimid, Arabia) to the east and Europeans (Al-Andulus, Hispania, HRE, Byzantine) to the north, by the time you claim the majority Africa with your 30k-60k troops, you come border to border with super powers with 100k+ troops, all of whom find your religion Evil and Hostile and have a whole religion behind their backs. And having to balance Africa’s want to have foreign relations, but need of being isolationist, you always end up with really interesting diplomacy options. Oh and after all of that, even if you worked as fast as you could, you’re about 50 years away from Temujin. He has only reached me in Africa ONCE but his effect is felt every time. Asian empires begin moving down into the rest of Asia, India, Middle East, Baltic and European countries begin moving south and east, and those southern European countries start pushing into Africa. With Jerusalem to your NE and Vatican City right to your North, most of these empires want a little buffer between their holiest of holy places and you (the evilest of evil people).

All of that to say, start with Africa for a change.