My friend, the one who got me to buy this game, keeps suggesting that I should get conclave. He keeps talking about how it makes the game better, but nothing he has told me about it makes me any bit more interested.
Ever since I first began, my worst enemies were not the rulers of other kingdoms, other duchies, or empires; they've been my own vassals. Keeping vassals happy and cooperative, as well as weak enough that they aren't a threat, is a never ending struggle.
So my friend suggests to me a DLC that by all appearances makes my vassals even LESS cooperative and even harder to keep happy. He tells me that his council won't even let him appoint new viceroys.
And he tells me that that is the whole point of the DLC....
So what I'm wondering is, what else does the dlc have to offer?
There are definitely some upsides to the council - first, you can take away all their power (and in some starts, (eg. most of the Middle East) they start with no power) and never face a vote on any law - you want a law, you pass it, just like how Muslims can without Conclave. Alternatively, if the council
does have power (power can be given in small bits), you can pass laws every five years instead of every ten years, so long as you can get them to agree to pass them. It also opens the "advisor" positions, which can be used to appease unskilled vassals that demand a position on the council anyway.
Also, if the council is allowed to vote on war declarations, no matter their opinions of you, councilors can never join factions unless the council is discontent (which usually only happens when you get a new ruler and usually goes away before anything comes of it).
Also, a regent can't undo all your work and drop you from Absolute CA to Autonomous Vassals, as crown authority is no longer used as a law, and is instead generally broken up into more laws.
The Conclave version of the obligations laws does not carry any permanent opinion penalties (or boosts), unlike the vanilla ones, so if you want to squeeze your mayors for maximum taxes or your duke for maximum levies, they might be mad in the short run, but they'll get over it.
Furthermore, there's the Status of Women laws, which you can use to allow succession laws your religion would normally ban (including Absolute Cognatic), appoint women to council positions, and eliminate the opinion penalties for having a female ruler or heir (however, the level that grants that and Absolute Cognatic is one of the few laws that's legitimately hard to pass).
Normally, your council (at least based on the realms I have played, they've never had more power than passing my laws and voting for wars, the latter of which I have yet to see my court actually say "no" on) shouldn't have any power to do things like determine your title appointments (this is probably the big one that you do not want them to ever get), revocations, banishments, or executions unless you actually give them those powers.
As far as I'm concerned the real biggest drawback is that there's no Ewiger Landfriede/King's Peace (Medium CA prohibition on inter-vassal wars or Absolute CA prohibition on
all vassal wars), and the "Enforce Peace" option (get the council to demand an end to all currently active wars between your vassals three months after it's passed) is a very, very poor substitute.
In general, I quite like it and find that the realm is at least as easy to manage as before. The main trick is to find a level of council authority you like (I'd generally recommend either absolutely none or authority to vote on wardecs) and never, ever let them take a single step further.
EDIT: Since this post was originally made, access to internal and total King's Peace has been added for Conclave owners.
