Changes to Lithuania and Muscovy's duchy government

[nobodyinparticular]

So both of these nations are duchy rank ingame when this is a misrepresentation of what a grand duchy in eastern europe means - it was seen as equivalent to a kingdom in western europe and not on the same level as, say, the grand duchy of luxembourg. But instead of discussing semantics, I would like to make the case from a gameplay perspective. These nations are too large to suffer from no monthly autonomy change and just 2 diplomats! Hence, I propose the following unique government forms for these nations:

Grand Duchy of Lithuania
Rank: Kingdom

+50 Governing capacity
+1 Max promoted cultures

Lithuania would start with Ryazanian as an accepted culture too, as it represents about 20% of their starting development and only Ruthenian and Byelorussian are accepted at the start. But the extra accepted culture could also be scrapped for balance reasons, as it might be intentional for Lithuania to have a chunk of wrong culture wrong religion provinces with high starting autonomy for Muscovy/Russia to take over.

Grand Duchy of Muscovy
Rank: Kingdom
Uses Russian Principality interactions

+100 Governing capacity
-1 National unrest
+5% National tax modifier
-15% Diplomatic annexation cost

It's basically the same kit as the other russian principalities but with kingdom rank and a modest diplo-annexation cost to integrate vassals a bit faster. It's lost upon forming Russia anyways so it should be balanced.

 

[almoravid]

While this would have been correct in medieval Russia and Lithuania, by the early modern era, you had a proliferation of Grand Duchies. Besides Muscovy, you had Grand Duchies of Tver, Ryasan, Yaroslavl and even Pronsk. By 15th century, it simply signified independence. Vitautas, the grand duke of Lithuania, specifically tried to elevate his country to the status of a kingdom 1429-1430, but was foiled by the Polish.

So yeah, take attaining royal rank as a challenge for the Lithuanians.