Good Ideas, far away from perfection.
Compared to other paradox titles army management and management are simplified while diplomacy is greatly enhanced.
It plays out quiet interesting actually. You can marry your kids or you can grant lieges to characters in order to increase relations, you can exchange hostages to support a peace treaty, hire ninjas to capture you hostages back and lots of other stuff.
If you don't start as a clan leader you first have to use all tricks to your disposal to break free and create you own clan. There is a developer video where they show how you can start a plot, invite you friends to join your plot and finally overthrow you clan leader.
So far so good, but in practice it all goes to hell.
Trying to invite even one other plotter just ended in endless frustration because even my closest friends wouldn't join because of their low honor (the other currency besides gold), that didn't change AT ALL for at least five years.
That is just an example, there is lots of other stuff that doesn't really make sense. You have three guys under you command to issue orders to, basically a diplomat, a warrior and a spy. In the beginning you have guys to choose from, but chance are good that in case on of them dies you won't find a replacement loosing all abilities in the specific field. WTF??
Also there's lots of problems taken over from previous paradox games: Information are just thrown at you, have fun keeping ahead of them. If you want to know what going on you have to switch between three to five map overlays and some things are virtually impossible to find out. The load times are also pretty annoying and get longer and longer as the game progresses.
In the end it comes down to you willingness to stick with another pretty difficult and unforgiving paradox game long enough until they patched the basic problems out of it. I wouldn't buy it anytime soon.