DLC for New Players

[Silentjester769]

I'm wanting to play this game with my friend that has never played the game, however I don't know what expansions to include in our game. I currently have all of the major expansions, but I am wanting to disable the ones that make the game more complex. I'm know Conclave is a safe bet but that is all that I that I can think of. Is that it or should I disable all of them and go off of what little I remember from the base game. We will be using the 1066 start if that changes anything.

 

[vandevere]

I'm no great expert, but if your friend has never played the game before, I would suggest initially disabling all of the dlcs and going with the plain base game until your friend has enough knowledge of the base game to experiment with the dlcs...

Once your friend has found his feet, then really, it will be up to him what dlcs he should choose...

 

[RX2000]

I agree. For someone starting out brand new to CK2 its probably best to have them do vanilla with no DLC at all just to get the basic mechanics down. Once thats done then they can decide if they wanna try Muslims, Republics, or want retinues, etc etc that the various DLCs add in.....

 

[Bernard95]

Frankly I'd just leave everything on besides Sunset Invasion (if playing late, which you should start him off as a duke or small king in 1066) and then Conclave because you don't need the Council interfering with the learning process early on.

Other than those two, everything else (especially any of the religious/government DLCs) is basically going to have a minimal impact on a standard Christian game. WoL's foci he might as well see (plus it may come in handy to show him how stat changes impact the game) and LoR's retinues are a pretty standard thing that he should understand.

Only other thing I'd conside is disabling Horse Lords if I was playing in the Eastern half of the map. They're not nearly as overpowered as they used to be, though it is still a little bit dodgy to be directly in their path around Russia and Poland.

 

[DorlasAnther]

Just teach him the game with all DLCs, including Conclave. He will have to learn it anyways, so might as well throw him in the water and see if he can swim. Also, if he starts with all DLCs, he won´t have to relearn lots of things (for example completely new laws and council mechanics with Conclave, inability to just make your character godlike with Conclave, whole WoL stuff and religious mechanics from SoA and Old Gods...and viceroys in ERE with Charlemagne, custom titles with Charlemagne and so on). I know I had to completely change my playstyle after I bought DLCs and there were lots of new things to learn.
Only situation where you should not start with DLCs enabled is if you learn the game from older YouTube videos, where the game was different. But as you are there to teach him, I don´t see any problem.

 

[hagagaga]

Honestly, I started by diving in with all DLC enabled (up through TOG at the time) and that turned out fine.