If TMIT were to be convinced that the LA floor was a good mechanic for all of Malaysia, the Americans, and African nations, I'd be inclined to think I was mistaken mechanically.
Heaven help us all if that's your baseline for all your decisions about mechanics.
But for the sake of science, I'll commit to at least starting a Kongo game. My willingness to suffer aggravation in said game is going to be rather limited.
Well, that's at least something. It doesn't count if the thing that aggravates you isn't related to provincial autonomy, though.
How are mechanics which make Native Americans inferior at utilizing native lands than european colonists not racist?
Because CNs are not a purely European mechanic, and Europeans are not in fact intrinsically superior at colonising the land (that is, after all, why Russia won't be getting below 50% autonomy in Siberia either).
Your Kongo could westernise and make a CN in South America and it will be just as efficient at using the land as any European one - and more efficient than a European coloniser without a CN. So how is that racist, exactly?
This is a nerf to same-continent-and-land-connection colonising. The fact that it mostly affects natives of the Americas, East Asia and Africa (with Russia as a very notable exception) does not mean it is purely for the benefit of Europeans (it will in fact harm Europeans in several situations, such as anyone trying to conquer land routes into Africa).
Regardless, that's my feeling on the matter, and no gameplay is going to change that. I'm kind of shocked you don't think so. Surely there was a better way to balance this than giving european colonists magical powers to avoid game mechanics, just because colonial powers needed to see greater benefits to 'make colonization worthwhile' (Wiz's exact reasoning, paraphrased). Magical powers specifically to benefit european colonizers at the expense of native groups sets off alarm bells, especially when Wiz says he can't give similar "magical powers" to natives, because... reasons? (Yes, the "magical powers" phrase comes from Wiz, although he was only willing to use it for natives. The cynic in me concludes its because, clearly, only european colonists were capable of fully utilizing the land naturally, for other cultures to do it would require magic. Sarcasm detected is solely mine).
Again, it is only CNs (which are not necessarily European) which avoid the floor on provincial autonomy. European colonisers in Africa have no such luck (and, in fact, are intrinsically worse at using the land than a native African coloniser, who doesn't need a land connection to get below 75% autonomy). And Wiz has also said he understands the need to have a mechanic for native colonisers to lower it at some point so that the first provinces you colonise aren't at 50% autonomy forever.
That is why I don't see it the way you do. That, and I play these states all the time and am very aware of how unrealistically powerful same-continent colonisation is.
On a historical note, most colonizable areas without established populations *couldn't be productively colonized* (from the home country's government's perspective) for most of the game's time period. The initial British colonies *failed* as money-making ventures, and it was only near 100% autonomous local governance which made them viable at all. Spain and Portugal's successful central and south american colonies enslaved large native populations, plundered their riches, and compelled forced labor (the encomienda system) to make them profitable - slavery in the Caribbean and North America were attempts to create the same situations the Spanish benefited from in Mexico and Peru, and the Portugese in Brazil. The Spanish specifically avoided colonizing low density areas until almost 1600, and the initial attempt to colonize Buenos Aires failed because there were no natives to enslave (the local tribe was migratory and simply moved away) and the colonists refused to work. (In the game, the encomienda system is sadly just an event which whitewashes all the horrors of the institution, and gives only a positive bonus and glowing endorsement, and magically disappears after the colony completes).
While all that's true, it's difficult to deal with in game for a number of reasons, not least of which because it's supposed to be fun to colonise and follow history.
I am not whitewashing the history of colonialism. I loathe colonialism and I've had many bitter arguments with proponents of it on these forums. But it's a game set in a time period where you can't ignore it, and making there be little incentive to colonise (except for gold areas and sugar islands, which were ludicrously profitable, far more than they are in game) makes the game less fun, which is ultimately important. I will also hasten to add that Paradox also avoids unfun or awful things like the mechanics of the transatlantic slave trade, makes it a suboptimal choice to slaughter all the natives in colonies, and doesn't significantly represent the devastation of native societies by Western epidemics. It cuts both ways, not just for Europeans and against the ROTW - ultimately the idea is to make a fun game first, and be historically accurate only to the extent that it benefits that.
Plus, of course, an accurate simulation of which colonialism did and didn't do to benefit the coloniser would require an economic system that is an order of magnitude more complex than the EU series uses. Even Victoria, a series much more focused on the economy, still had to give up and make African colonies ahistorically profitable (although in most cases the big benefit for colonising there is still prestige).
