[quote=@ZB1996]
I'm interested, and I'd like to have a nation more akin to Mesopotamia than Europe. I was just wondering if since we will have 500 years of background, would that mean that all our nations had sprung up at the same time? And also, I think that while cultural interactions would inevitably occur, it wouldn't be some all-powerful force.
[/quote]

Some good points here.

As an aside, the three big cultures I'm thinking about while I'm brainstorming nation ideas are the Bedouin, the Mayans, and the Moors.