izigame.me

I've avoided writing reviews for almost anything as opinions are like well you know the saying but the hate for this DLC is mostly unfounded.
First I hate using personal experience or time as a way to disqualify other's opinions but in this case I feel that my well over 2000 hours of gameplay does put me in a unique category when it comes me as a players. Majority of my hours were logged in AFTER Conclave came out. I also do rp campaigns and powergaming conquest games so I'm more or less familiar with the both major types of playstyles.
Before Conclave I played this game sparringly as it offered a unique and fun experience but often was stale in terms of strategy whether you rp'ed or powergamed. CK2 at a point became pointless to play and was more or less a character driven EU4 without the added strategy elements of the latter game (as fedalism/vassals is a unique mechanic to CK2). The reason for this is that internal politics became extremely gamey and cheesy as your kingdom/empire became larger. Depending on your succession law one would just simply mantain control of a strong duchy (or two if you had the demense for more) with as many holdings as possible and in your capital just stacked castles ensuring a crazy high personal levy augmented by a super powerful retinue. The result was your vassals were no longer an issue and it removed a lot of the strategy from the game because at this point you were typically so powerful that foreign realms would fall to retinues and personal levies alone. Or you just went feudal elective and buttered up your vassals ensuring they voted your candidate (which is easily done once your rules was on the throne for a decade). In both cases internal politics became moot and thus stale for anyone other than those who just want paint the map (nothing wrong with that). At which point I mostly played EU4 and used CK2 to create more interesting EU4 campaigns.
Now enter Conclave, my first game with the DLC was annoyingly frustrating as it ruined my typical strategies from earlier games. No longer was it viable to make several vassals equal in power, no longer could I have several vassals and create super councils to further my agenda, and no longer could I act with impunity and or unilaterally. Simply put a whole new level of strategy became viable. Now multiple strategies concerning vassals were playable, I had to choose between skill and internal stability. The reasons why my vassals didn't like me or liked me made sense organically, being forced to buy or give a favor to a vassal to further my agenda now flowed better. Managing the level of central authority versus a concensus oligarchic government was more fleshed out. On one extreme I could create a powerless council granting me more personal demense but at the cost of having less vassals who could join factions and can't enforce a truce before becoming an empire (this also reflects why large authoritarian empires of the time period usually crumbled). This strategy works well when you're a smaller kingdom but when you an huge empire spanning several kingdoms enforcing central authority is difficult even with a super effective retinue as civil war is inevitable and even if you win (with certain retinue combinations it's more than possible) you're weaken and this slows expansion. On the other extreme one could have a powerful council with peak internal stability but at the cost of your council having a say in your domestic or external agenda. The most annoying case being having a say in declaring war, regulating who you give titles to or whom you can revoke titles from. This strategy requires one to understand the diplomatic/personal relationship mechanics in this game and quite frankly a ton of gold, but it does increase the number of vassals and therefore can increase the size of your realm. Or you can find a happy medium in between to suit your needs at the time. Whether you're a power gamer or rp'er Conclave opens up a new layer of strategy that allows one to come up with multiple ways to deal with a council and vassals strategy that is more dynamic than the base game. There is no longer one viable strategy to deal with vassals, which makes the game more interesting but that is not the true gem of this DLC.
Conclave opens up a new kind of playthrough that before was mostly boring and not worth playing. CK2 is unique in it's game play that one could play a vassal and be the king maker. Most people who played this way, rp'er or powergamer mostly did so to plot for the throne. Now with Conclave a vassal playthrough can be fun and challenging. You can force your way on to the council and try to influence your realms policies by the use of the council. This play is somewhat similar to the powerful council with you as the liege except you no longer need to worry about revolts but have less strength to carry out your agenda. Such a playthough is unique to this game only and can only be enjoyed with Conclave as my vassal camapagns before it were boring I could never go back. Granted this playthrough mostly appeals to rp'ers but it can be a fun powergame camapaign say as a vassal king/duke in the HRE/ERE or vassal nomadic clan.
As frustrating as it was to change my playstyle to accomodate this DLC I can honestly say that this might be the only DLC I would put on a must-have list. This DLC alone made CK2 my favorite Paradox game by far (I'm a long time EU player, started playing since EU1). The other DLC's add in more religions, or government types, or adds "depth", all of which add to the game but don't really affect how one plays it just adds in different mechanics for how one accomplishes different goals. This is the only DLC that transforms this game from a less complex EU4 driven by a character/dynasty to a medieval political simulator. I would recommend it to players of any type and skill level except those who want to paint the map. If you're goal is to simply conquer the map (cheesing it or not) than I'd avoid it completely, it adds nothing to your style of play.