Maya gaming update post apocalypse:
It's now the 1600s and I still have no fucking clue what feudalism is because there's no reform mechanic I can see to jump start your tech. Fortunately the colonial AI is so unambitious that I've been able to just chill and grab a lot of the imperial mexican territories. I would have done it a lot sooner, but I had a major tool shortage which totally crippled my colonial game.

Turns out iron tools are a lot better than stone tools btw - who knew? Colonzing the 3 iron regions in the north massively jumpstarted my tool/weapon economy and let me blob. I can't tell if that's unintended behaviour or not because it doesn't let you expand the RGO without an advancement but it's absolutely amazing for the north american economies.
For anyone else playing a shithole rushing down iron as early as possible is absolutely the way to go.
Small vassals are incredibly OP for culture/religion assimilation, btw. I've practically doubled my core population by releasing custom subjects->enforce culture/religion->annex. I have my council full time on assimilation and they're still only like 10% as fast. I wish I had any idea at all what they're doing
I actually quite like the southern border so I might stay passive with new spain. I guess it depends on where the AI actually starts to push back against me when I move north.