Piracy and privateering demand big oceans and small navies. If the New World were settled by lots of powers instead of a united Iberian peninsula, France, and England, then you could have a dozen or more equal powers in the Americas. Keep France separate from Savoy and Flanders, maybe even a successful Cathar resistance? Add in a multinational Iberian peninsula with Aragon separate from Castile, or even still a Granada and a Galicia and a Basque federation?
1. Newfoundland, PEI
2. St. Lawrence.
3. Hudson to Maine.
4. Susquehana, Chesapeake, Potomac river systems.
5. Seaboard south to Okefenokee.
6. Florida.
7. Mobile, Pensacola, almost to New Orleans.
8. Indian nations all up the Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio.
9. New Orleans to Atchafalaya
10. Red River.
11. Houston and upriver, all the way down to Brownsville.
12. Rio Grande.
13. Cuba.
14. Hispaniola.
15. Jamaica.
16. Puerto Rico.
17. Trinidad and the islands.
18. etc, etc, etc.
Every large island and every river system with good transportation winds up as a separate language or country. Nobody has the clout to form them into an empire. Lots of inland areas have Indians still resident. Slower settlement because trading wins out over slave colonies and religious nuts. This gives the Indians time to recover from epidemics and import alcohol resistant genes.
Yeah, could be done.