Heh, I've only played with it a couple of hours, but I do enjoy the Way of Life DLC. I think it's a neat thing to have especially for if you're uniting Ireland or something like I am (still a noob at this game
). But it adds just enough choice that you can play as a Count/Earl for a while without getting bored out of your skull.
In my game I picked the Earl of Dubhlinn again. I quickly married his son off to some Lowborn with good stats, focusing on Stewardship, and invited some well-skilled individuals to my court to fill my council. Switched over to Primogeniture. Then I placed him on the Business focus. He quickly got an option to support a new business in his county, which he had to borrow money from the Jewish lenders to afford. But in the long run it easily paid for itself. Down the line a couple other events popped up I can't remember off-hand, one of them making him Stressed. His brother died leaving him to inherit the uh, county south of him, forgot what it's called. I sat for a while trying to fabricate claims and an event chain about a foreign trade route popped up. I poured some money into that and was excited to see where it went when he suddenly died of "extreme stress". Whoops.
His son inherited the throne, and I put him on Family focus as well as the "have a son" ambition. Years pass, and he ends up being the ward of his uncle who was born soon after he came into power. I start spamming summer fairs to fix the negative prestige his marriage caused. In the end, they pop out five daughters before finally having a son. I've started teaching the first-born daughter at this point as well. The main event popups I saw seemed to be automatic relations boosts with family members, usually +20 for 240 months. In any case, with an heir finally in place I switched over to intrigue as I haven't had luck fabricating claims (yeah, I know that's under diplomacy. I derped)
A couple more years pass, during which time my uncle comes of age. I haven't seen any intrigue events but I haven't tried spying on anyone either. At this point an event fires that is trying to paint my only heir as a "suspected demon". I choose the option to consult my chaplain, and he basically says "yeah bro. Your kid's totally a demon. And your wife's been affiliating with witches." My options were to take a massive piety hit by saying he's wrong, which doesn't even prevent the rumors. Or I would need to declare my only heir a bastard, and piss him off. But because my intrigue was buffed, I had a third option, to have the chaplain assassinated for the low cost of 50 gold. 1 guess what I did next.
Shortly thereafter I was fed up with a lack of claims and went to replace my chancellor. I realized that I'd perfectly groomed my uncle for this role, who had a diplomacy of 21 opposed to the other guy's 14. Within literally a game month of replacing the old guy, I had my claim. And then blah blah war and victory.
Still, fun stuff. Gonna have to see what happens when I start actively spying on people.