Steam sale - is Conclave worth getting?

[Castios]

I am in similar situation. I am semi-experienced ck2 player, with about 400h on clock, but I heard a lot bad stuff about conclave. I don't really mind patch changes because my goal was never to blob, honestly in my opinion game becomes boring and stale once you become strong enough to just roll over everyone around you. My playstyle involves a little bit of roleplaying, knowing every single of my vassals and following their families and just achieving specific goals.

Few things in conclave that I disagree with and drive me absolutely nuts,
- Vassals choosing their predefied stances based on traits and not being able to vote on stuff when playing as vassal, but only choosing your own stance. I don't really understand why can't we just vote on everything individually
- Too big relations hit for not being at council. -40, really? So simply not having council seat is as offensive as murdering one of your vassals and causing tyranny?
- Education - and this is my biggest issue, I absolutely HATE not being able to choose traits you want but instead heavily relying on randomness. Not to mention that absurd thing which causes military education to dumb down your child, that makes no sense. In every single game I am for reducing randomness, not adding more of it. Shaping characters into best general, spymaster etc. was my favourite thing in ck2 and with conclave I would have to be really lucky to get same results (for example Briliant strategist).

So in the end I don't know. I like improved council and that councillors are more than just your marionettes, but all other changes, especially education is really really bad in my opinion. It would be great if only things wouldn't be mostly random.

 

[Kryndude]

If a player is having to consult something outside of game to know what to do, it's a failure. I don't see anything about this in any in-game tutorials, either.

Personally I'm okay with this. In fact for strategy games, I sometimes find reading the wikis and stuff more entertaining than the actual game itself. What really matters to me is the actual content, and although the current game system is more in-depth than the previous one, there is no doubt that it's in need of some fine-tuning even though I agree with the overall direction of the change.

 

[CoSMoS]

- Too big relations hit for not being at council. -40, really? So simply not having council seat is as offensive as murdering one of your vassals and causing tyranny?

My favourite is that you get -100 for having an affair exposed. It's better to assasinate a persons entire family than to fuck somebody else, they like you better for just commiting numerous murders.

 

[Harassercat]

And what's difficult for players is impossible for the AI.

Very good point. I like Conclave overall and mostly enjoy the council politics. But I'm inclined to agree with the criticism here of the education system. The concept is nice and seems great at first, but once you realize how over-complex and random it is and how badly the AI messes it all up, it gets frustrating. Education is the biggest source of micromanagement for me currently, because not only must I educate the kids at my court; I also feel inclined to check how my most powerful vassals are educating their heirs, because I don't want to end up with ambitious good-for-nothings some 20-30 years down the line. Not only has the AI not been instructed to choose educators with at least one attribute at 12+, it also regularly picks bad childhood foci like etiquette, pride and heritage focus for no particular reason, and then later on it has no clue what education to pick based on the childhood traits.

 

[RelVleDy]

Not only has the AI not been instructed to choose educators with at least one attribute at 12+, it also regularly picks bad childhood foci like etiquette, pride and heritage focus for no particular reason, and then later on it has no clue what education to pick based on the childhood traits.

I've noticed when you choose someone to educate someone, the game will recommend a candidate. This recommendation will sometimes provide one good guardian trait, but that's about it. It fails at the +12 thing and definitely fails at picking TWO or more good guardian traits. I'm glad the game has some form of intelligence that it's able to recognize at least one good guardian trait, but that's the extent of it.

Also, this hasn't been touched upon, but some guardians will pick religious focuses if the guardian is religious, so if it seems like the AI is picking those a lot, then look at the type of person their guardian is. Even though they aren't the best focuses, Paradox wants to make the AI believable -- the AI picks based on their behavior; not what is the best focus.

 

[Riekopo]

Conclave is the one CK2 DLC that I can say is bad. I don't recommend it.