Coming back to the game after a year - Which DLC is necessary?

[marat271]

I haven't played this game for quite a while and am now coming back to start a new game.

As there has been a lot of DLC released in the meanwhile I'm wondering what is the most important to get. I've every single piece of DLC sans these:
- Conclave
- Horse Lords
- Way of Life
- Charlemagne

Which of these enhance the experience of the base game if i want to just play Christians/Vikings?

 

[smellymummy]

way of life and conclave

 

[Thrake]

Charlemagne is mostly an earlier start date and viceroyalties, none being too important indeed. So I'd second smellymummy.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Which of these enhance the experience of the base game if i want to just play Christians/Vikings?

way of life and conclave

Agreed.

edit - As a Viking, Charlemagne would give you more years to raid, but won't enhance the experience much.

edit 2 - The further east you get, the more Horse Lords affects the game play. I'm assuming you will stay on the west side of the map when you say limit the advice to just a Christian/Viking experience. And someone mentioned further down that Tributaries are activated in Horse Lords, so there's that.

 

[Dragatus]

I haven't played this game for quite a while and am now coming back to start a new game.

As there has been a lot of DLC released in the meanwhile I'm wondering what is the most important to get. I've every single piece of DLC sans these:
- Conclave
- Horse Lords
- Way of Life
- Charlemagne

Which of these enhance the experience of the base game if i want to just play Christians/Vikings?

The main point of Horse Lords is playing a a steppe nomad so if you're not going to do that, there is no point in getting the DLC.

Charlemagne gives you a new start date (769 AD), the ability to grant titles as viceroyalties (which means you are the heir), and the ability to create a custom titular kingdom if you own 3 duchies or a custom titular empire if you own 3 kingdoms. It's nice, but far from essential.

Way of Life allows you to choose a "focus" for your character such as Hunting, Seduction, or Business. There are 10 available and when you pick one you get related events, some of which will slowly "level up" your character in that focus. Once you level up the focus all the way you get a lifestyle trait that grants 3 attributes points and something extra. Examples of lifestyle traits are Hedonist, Master Seducer, Duelist, Scholar, Gardener, Impaler, etc. The main complain people have about WoL are the Seduction and Intrigue foci, because AI characters that take them sort of run wild with them and use them indiscriminately. For seduction that's mostly an annoyance (you can never be sure that your children are truly your own), but Intrigue can be quite serious because you can get kidnapped by a vassal who likes you and die during the attempt. I'm not entirely sure how common that is since I don't have it. But I'm sure others will be more than happy to give you their impression.

Finally, Conclave is the only one that I actually consider essential. That's because some features of the free patch are actually incomplete without it. For example, you can use favors to work a way around defensive pacts that form against you, but you need to have Conclave in order to enable favours in the first place. Aside from that you get the new council mechanics and the new child education.

So I would recommend you to get Conclave and then consider Way of Life as it complements the new education system.

 

[Gwyn ap Nud]

I concur. Conclave is the most important for adding actually meaningful internal politics. Way of Life works well with it. The others really aren't that useful unless you plan on actually playing in the 8th century, or as/near a nomadic tribe.

 

[szmik]

Playing as Nomads is fun, ymmw of course.

 

[The7Sins]

I haven't played this game for quite a while and am now coming back to start a new game.

As there has been a lot of DLC released in the meanwhile I'm wondering what is the most important to get. I've every single piece of DLC sans these:
- Conclave
- Horse Lords
- Way of Life
- Charlemagne

Which of these enhance the experience of the base game if i want to just play Christians/Vikings?

Do not get Conclave and in fact do not go beyond the 2.4.5 patch. Almost everything released after that patch and most things in Conclave only help to ruin the game.

Way of Life is love it or hate it among the playerbase for 1 reason Seduction Focus. Try it and see if you like it. If Seduction is to much mod it as I did to only be able to be selected by people with Lustful, Hedonist, Master Seducer or Master Seductress traits.

Horse Lords and Charlemagne are both excellent and I recommend both highly. For a Viking game Old Gods is better but for a game as a Catholic or Orthodox Charlemagne is superior IMO.

 

[Audoucet]

I concur. Conclave is the most important for adding actually meaningful internal politics. Way of Life works well with it. The others really aren't that useful unless you plan on actually playing in the 8th century, or as/near a nomadic tribe.

BEFORE buying Conclave, he should play the game without it. Because if he hates coalitions and shattered retreats, he'll go back to 2.4.5 and Conclave will be useless.

 

[JaguarXJ6]

Way of Life and Charlemagne are fantastic. It may not seem like a big deal to form a custom kingdom, however if you are starting Tribal or Gavelkind it's incredibly useful to consolidate power within your dynasty. And I love the earliest possible start dates because it ensures the longest time sink of a play through of a game, of any game ever (almost).

 

[Finnway]

Way of Life and Charlemagne are fantastic. It may not seem like a big deal to form a custom kingdom, however if you are starting Tribal or Gavelkind it's incredibly useful to consolidate power within your dynasty.

To add to what Jaguar said. To get the most of Charlemagne, I recommend downloading a mod that makes the AI more likely to create custom Kingdoms. There's a few in Steam workshop (CK2+ does it as well). In vanilla, the requirements for the AI to create a custom title is 4 times higher than a human player. Yikes

 

[killcreak]

I haven't played this game for quite a while and am now coming back to start a new game.

As there has been a lot of DLC released in the meanwhile I'm wondering what is the most important to get. I've every single piece of DLC sans these:
- Conclave
- Horse Lords
- Way of Life
- Charlemagne

Which of these enhance the experience of the base game if i want to just play Christians/Vikings?

Charlemagne and Way of Life are very good. If you don't plan to get the latest patches get Horse Lords too, nomads were in a league of their own. Conclave and related patches are garbage.

 

[Dahoota]

I'd second Conclave and Wol.

Both add great core mechanics to the game, especially the way the council and realm operates in Conclave. WoL adds a lot of flavour and you use it constantly.

The other 2 are more localised to start dates and areas of the map without sweeping core features, but both are worthwhile IMO.

Conclave cops a lot of heat because it takes some concepts from EU4 and implementation on release was a joke. The devs have greatly improved it and I'm a fan of its core features now.

 

[Dragatus]

To be more precise, the controversial EU features (shattered retreat and coalitions/defensive pacts) are in the free patch. So if you patch up your game you already have them.

 

[Rationalsanity]

If you are going to play the latest patch, you probably want to grab Conclave. Otherwise you'll have a rough time dealing with nerfs that assume you have access to Conclave's features.

 

[yourworstnightm]

None of them are necessary.

Horse Lords if you want unique Nomad government type with it's own gameplay. If you don't care about that, then it's certainly not necessary.

Conclave: The new council mechanics are quite fun, and most of the bad things came in the patch, not the DLC. If you want to play around with the Council more, buy Conclave. if it doesn't seem interresting: don't.

Way of Life: The foci can be fun, but the dreaded seduction and intrigue foci are ridiculous in vanilla. If you don't use mods that limit these, I'd recommend against buying this. I usually turn off WoL when playing Vanilla, but has it on if playing a mod that fixed the issues with seduction and intrigue.

Charlemagne: Adds another start date, a poorly made one at that. Can't recommend this one at all.

 

[Audoucet]

The seduction focus used to drive me crazy, Until I decided to always trust my wife and never make any inquiry about it. Since then, a lot of my kids are probably not really my kids, but it actually doesn't change anything, so... Yes it can be problematic if you are trying to make a genius/strong factory, but I'm not.

 

[PK_AZ]

Horse lords also give you an option to build trade post in silk road provinces, and some new adventurers mechanic. The first one is Indian thing and the second, well, I can play happily without Attack of Normans.

I recommend Conclave and maybe Way of Life. Both are steps in right direction and both give you something to do during peacetime. Conclave has it's own problems in addition to problems inherited from vanilla. It changes the way internal politics works and I love the new version, but I cannot say it's in every aspect better than vanilla. And I think it makes playing as king actually easier, thanks to new obligation laws (40% min levy and 20% taxes as standard).

WoL is nice both from roleplay and gamey perspective. You can use it to rush technology and for example get 5th level of legalism and majesty before 1066. On the other hand, it has so much content you could probably just sit and play two hundred years to find it all.

Also, I think defensive pacts and shattered retreat are overhated. But I played as fifth strongest country in Europe, no idea how they works if you are some lesser duke.

 

[jfoytek]

Way of Life is the greatest DLC that Paradox has ever released for the game!
Chalked full of events that add so much flavor to the game....

Charlemagne is also very high on my list as it gives me so many fun places to start, the 1066 start is rather dull not much variety but the 769 start and you find england broken up into so many pieces, and so many other small starting locations, its great!!! 769 is now my only way to start a game....

Horse Lords- Its a change of pace it adds flavor to the game a new blob to mess with the Byzantines and Muslims some extra mercenaries but for the most part I don't use the majority of its content in my games. In a way it has a similar effect to your play as Legacy of Rome where it provides retinues and not much else.... However it has given me enough that I don't feel I was ripped off....

****Now where I strongly Disagree with many above****
Conclave is in my opinion the worst DLC Paradox has ever released....

The Education system strip's the game of far to many events and doesn't really replace these events with anything new!
They attempted to fix problems with overpowered character's but it only made the education part of the game less interesting, and now Strong Genius Quick seem far less rare! Thus resulting in really no fix to the over powered character problems!

The Mercenary Band's was something high on my list, but they provide such a tiny fraction of income for a far bigger fraction of your troops! The only guy that gets rich in this system is they guy you make your Mercenary Band Captain, so the only way to game this system is to make that person your heir! Not a fan of how this has been implemented....

The council I am indifferent about it really hasn't added any real flavor or role play they don't really govern or do much anything different then they use too, it seems mainly to be a way to add difficulty to the game and it fails to do so as its easy to adjust and overcome there minor nuisance roll's they play! I really was expecting something so much more then a the glorified UI change it really is! And the biggest issue here is they stripped absolute crown authority out of the game, and while being able to give woman rights is cool the lack of crown authority ultimately takes away from this one mechanic I can almost swallow as acceptable!

So to summarize Conclave is not even remotely worth the cash in its current state.... And stick with a sure thing like Way of Life!

 

[Audoucet]

I agree that even though the patch is the problem, I have absolutely 0 interest in Conclave's features. For me they are the opposite of an improvement. I don't complain about it since it's optional, so I don't buy it and that's it, but I think it's the worse DLC ever.