Greetings everyone! And welcome back to another Development Diary for the upcoming DLC. Last week we took a look at the Teutonic Order, and for today we shall visit the monastic neighbor to its north: the Livonian Order.

The Livonian Brotherhood of the Sword was founded in Riga in 1202 for the purpose of christianizing Livonia. Despite their early successes, the Brotherhood suffered a heavy defeat against the Lithuanians in 1237. The remaining members of the Brotherhood then got incorporated into the Teutonic Order, which then later branched into the Livonian Order we all know in EU4.

The Livonian Order survived its Teutonic brother, but in the end it too was conquered by its neighbors. As such their mission tree is similar to the ones of the Teutonic Order: a mission tree of what if?, though this time it is a little bit more grounded as the Livonian Order did persist as the Polish vassal state Kurland for some time after until the third partition of Poland.



Just like the Teutonic Order, so does the Livonian Order have a bunch of branching missions depending on the path you choose. However, you first have to complete the middle column first in order to unlock your missions.

Most of the missions are rather self explanatory from their titles alone (Protect Riga and The Teutonic Knights both require you to ally or to conquer Riga and the Teutonic Order respectively for example).
The more interesting one, however, is the mission The Livonian Confederation. In 1444, the Livonian Order was by far not as unified as it is shown in EU4. It had four bishoprics as well as the Archbishopric of Riga within it, which were not really subjects of the Livonian Order but allies.

Due to the freeze of the map and the hard block of introducing new tags to the game, we have decided to take a more abstract approach to the Livonian Confederation:



Every bishopric and the lands of Riga are portrayed as one estate privilege to the Clergy estate. And yes, we are increasing the number of maximum possible estate privileges from 4 to 6! More to it in the free patch section.

Each of these privileges has its own penalty which makes these bishoprics obnoxious to keep. Fortunately, you dont have to wait endlessly for clergy loyalty to revoke them (though this is the easiest way to get rid of them). While you have any of the bishoprics active in your land, you gain access to these two decisions:



Each of these decisions is one way to get rid of one of these bishoprics. Purchase Bishopric requires you to be debt free and to have no deficit, as well as to have a starting capital of 100 Ducats (which is basically the starting fee to even get into the trade with one of these bishops), and triggers the following event:



The cost of these bishoprics is relative to the land they historically had. For example: the Bishopric of Reval was rather small and only covered the city, while the Bishopric of Dorpat covered the whole province. In general, the pattern is like this: the higher up in the event option, the more costly it gets.

If you cannot throw money at your problem to get it gone, then the decision Dissolve Bishopric might be the better option. At the small:: price of 2 stability you can trigger the following event:



This decision cannot be enacted if you either already have rebels in your land or if you are at war.

On a side note: you need to own the provinces where these bishoprics are located to revoke the privileges through the decisions or manually. However, losing the land will NOT remove the privilege - this is mostly due to gameplay reasons as you shouldnt be motivated to give all your land to Lithuania to get rid of these privileges.

After getting rid of all the small bishoprics and finishing the mission Protect Riga you can finally seize the lands of the Archbishopric of Riga, the mission The Livonian Confederation will be completed and you will get 10% Crown Land from your Clergy back.

Then, with the mission Strengthen Our Authority you can finally get this event:



Let us first start with the mission tree of the Livonian mission path:



You will notice that there are colonial missions, which seems a little bit weird for a Baltic nation whose only trade connection to the New World is in the Lbeck trade node. The reason for that is that the Livonian path of the mission tree gets shared with Kurland (more to it in the free patch section).

The colonial missions are quite obvious what they are about: discover the New World, colonize North America, colonize key ports of Africa and reach India. Highlights of these two mission columns are two rather powerful permanent trade bonuses such as +10% Trade Efficiency from dominating colonial trade and +10% Global Trade Power from colonizing India.
On a side note: if you have a Random New World active then the North American missions get replaced with ones which address the Random New World.



Continuing with the mission tree, the middle column handles the mentioned issue of no gain from New World trade. With the mission Deal with the Hansa, which requires you to defeat Lbeck, you gain the following reward:



In a way, you will be able to benefit from your colonies even if you do not conquer the Lbeck trade node.

Another part of the middle column of the mission is the mission Secularize the Order which fires the following event for you:


The tag of Livonia has received some big changes, more to it in the 1.34 section.

With the mission A Prussian Alliance you either focus on conquering and developing Prussia OR keeping a healthy alliance with Prussia. If you complete this mission through diplomacy, you and Prussia become historical friends.
I also should point out that the mission trees of the Teutonic Order and the Livonian Order were designed with a MP co-op approach in mind: missions which have overlapping regions of interest can be completed if either of the one tags hold the land.

With the mission Reform the Government you will start a process of creating a government reform which is suited for your needs. This will be a process of 6 events, each one of them has a mean time to happen of 5 years. Here is one of such event as an example:



Note: This is very much work in progress, and can differ from the final events.

You always have three options to pick from: the first one lets you focus on a more concentrated and focused government which is suited for tall players, while the last option is for expansionists, though these government reforms have their own sets of drawbacks.
The middle option is the more balanced of the two, but this will reflect in your government reform too.

Right now there are 10 final governments you can get: one default Livonian Monarchy and nice specialized reforms based on your decisions from the 6 events. Here is a short overview of them:


Note: modifiers are not set in stone yet.

The final part of the mission tree is revolving around developing your land. Highlight of it is a permanent -5% Tech Cost Reduction in your capital province after constructing 10 universities.

That was the Livonian path, so let us move on to the Crusader path of the Livonian Order:



Those who have read last weeks Development Diary will know what the Teutonic Mission Tree was about, so you can expect to see some recurring themes - like the construction of churches and mending the Schism between Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

However, the Livonian Crusader missions are more focused on developing the Baltic and Russian lands; so basically a Tall Crusader State. The left side is mostly about keeping your country religiously stable and constructing churches and cathedrals - things you would expect from a faithful order of the Catholic faith. Highlights here are the missions Build Cathedrals and Defender of the Faith. With Build Cathedrals you unlock a estate privilege, which makes these tax buildings a little bit more useful:



Meanwhile, the mission Defender of the Faith requires you to be the Defender of the Catholic Faith for 25 consecutive years without any break. As a reward you get the following modifier:



The second column focuses on handling the Reformation while the middle one allows you to reform your knights and militarize them even further as they were. As the reward of the final mission you unlock the following government reform:


Note: modifiers are not final.

The final part of the mission tree is, well, about conquering and converting Ruthenia and Russia, as well developing these lands. Support Our Brethren is a mission where you are required to support other Catholic nations which border a powerful Heathen or Heretic country - most of the cases it is probably the Ottomans.

That was all for the Livonian Mission Tree!

Last but not least we take a look at what the free patch has in store.

Protestantism is a very versatile religion which has fallen off a little bit since Catholicism has gained its buffs. We dont think Protestantism is actually that much weaker compared to Catholicism. However, a good way to make Protestantism more appealing we have decided to add three new Church Aspects:



Additionally, we are also experimenting with a way to make swapping church aspects actually worth your time. Whenever you select a new Church Aspect you gain a passive modifier for 10 years which increase the effectiveness in of the Church Aspect:



I want to stress out that it is an experimental buff and NOT final. Chances are high that this can be changed throughout the development of the patch.

Next is Reformed, which has received a more boring but direct buff to their fervors as they were rarely - if ever - picked by any nation; and this even before the buffs to Catholicisim.
As such the following buffs were given:

• Trade Focus: Gives now +10% Trade Steering additionally to the other modifiers
  
• War Focus: Gives now +20% Manpower Recovery Speed additionally to the other modifiers
  
• Stability Focus: Gives now -10% Development Cost additionally to the other modifiers