I for one would prefer if the tech discrepancy in the game became far more significant and drastic as the game dragged on. As it is pretty much the entire world is on pair by 1800, this shouldn't be the case, differences should be much, much larger.
Institutions should not spread around so quickly (I'd lower the base value of all spreading factors by half, or even a quarter), and they shouldn't be so easy to embrace either (it should require it to be present in at least 25% or 34% of the country, you shouldn't be able to just buy it immediately once you got it in one province).
Institutions shouldn't be railroaded to be contained in Europe of course, but very weighted to remain more or less contained, unless the player in the RTOW does the right things to keep up.
The "right things" of course, shouldn't be force-developing a province like it is now, people above me already pointed it out, there should be more, and more organical ways of spawning and spreading institutions.
Another thing that bothers me is the way unit pips vary depending on technological group.
Western Units start as the worst, and then become the best later on, what's the logic on that?
Western Europe didn't magically become "better at fighting" with time, the reason of their military dominance was superior technology.
Honestly this pip discrepancy seems like band-aid to abstract Western late game performance, despite the lack of any significant technological discrepancy.
Fix the lack of tech discrepancy and pip differences will become obsolete.
I also see no reason why Western Units should be inferior to anyone else's units at the early technology levels, an argument can be made about specific cases, such as steppe cavalry being superior at the same tech level early on, or Anatolian Infantry... but that's as far as it goes.
And at the same time I don't see why western units should be superior later on against non-westerners at the same tech level (Their advantage should come mostly from tech superiority, in an hypotethical scenario they are fighting a non-western enemy with on-pair technology I don't see why westerners deserve an inherent advantage)
I'm not saying to get rid of pip differences altogether, sometimes pip differences are necessary, example:
Native American units should be considerably superior to western ones at the same level in the early techs to compensate the fact that Native Americans should be lagging behind MASSIVELY on military tech (consider they didn't even have iron weapons by the Spanish arrival), I'd say Mesoamerica should still be on Mil Tech 2-3 by the European arrival, as opposed to the 7-8 of the Europeans, in this situation It would justified to give Native Americans superior pips, otherwise the tech difference would make it a literally unplayable massacre.
However, sometimes these differences are not justified, counter-example:
The western group has the worst infantry and cavalry pips in the entire game by mil tech 8-9, which is 1505-1518 technology. Why is that?
There is no logic why the western group should underperform in comparison to the ROTW at tech levels 8-9, in fact, the limited examples we have of Western vs ROTW combat at tech 8-9 seem to actually favour the quality of Western troops:
By 1515, the Portuguese had fought dozens of (very successful) battles against the African group, the Muslim group, the Indian Group and the Chinese group, on their turf and heavily outnumbered. And it clearly wasn't "tech discrepancy" or anything of the sort, considering their foes in India, Indonesia and Arabia also had cannons (so they were at least tech 7).
As far as the late techs are concerned, I also don't see why the Western group should overperform either, In fact I would argue that depending on how railroaded Europe is to get ahead on tech, maybe they should actually underperform later on, for balance reasons.
Don't take me the wrong way, they would still probably stomp the ROTW, but not because their pips are "inherently better", but because they are like 7 tech levels ahead.
