I wouldn't say my setting is as detailed as real life history, but you can step in at any point from 1977 to around 7000 and there's always something major happening in the world. There's always gotta be a driver for world events. So, once you establish that, things tend to happen organically.

I usually treat all conflict as originating from different opinions and points of view. This scales from inter-personal drama to cultures, religions, countries and races. This is both a boon and a curse, since I know the motivations and backgrounds of all characters, I see how superficial and stupid the conflicts between them are. What saves me there is that the reader doesn't know, so they won't notice. Once you start seeing it, you notice that there is no actual reason for armed conflict at an international scale. Like, not ever.

And the worst part is writing characters. Not as in creating them, but writing good dialogue. Despite all my efforts, it still seems (to me) like every person is just the same guy wearing different clothes. I desperately need to talk to other humans (to learn how they speak to one another).