which is ironic, because often its one of the thing I often take care not to start or touch unless I want to do nothing else, as it doesn't give me any reason to play through it, even in vanilla skyrim the first time I played it I felt it was too easy and Ulfric went down so fast that I was like "this is it? this was the big civil war? really? really? what, am I supposed to immediately do this at level one or after slaying the first dragon or something?" there just does not seem to be a reason to even start the quest line, because what am I actually awarded with by doing it? oh, houses of the opposite side. as if I don't have cooler ones from just getting a mod.
the civil war being cut a lot really explains why its this way.