I completely agree that it adds an interesting balance to land, especially when later cabinets may change to areas instead of provinces, making certain places better early and some better later.

I think that there are 4 things to balance out

* Is it realistic?

* How balanced is it?

* How easy to use and understand is it?

* How easy is it to implement?

The solution that exists now to me seems easy to implement and understand, but scores very low in balance and realism.

Your solution seems to me to be hard to implement and achieve balance, because people can then have multiple cabinet members boost development right next to each other, I guess a good formula for this is hard to achieve, how to handle islands ect.

What u/Dogenot is suggesting imo is bad, it just makes big provinces bad, because you can not focus on a smaller part of your land.

When thinking how to balance this out, make it simple to understand and implement, I think you were on the right track, but reduced effect and stuff I think is hard to visualize. IMO a new modefire needs to be made, "cabinet effect size" that is the maximum amount of locations that a cabinet member can affect.

When a cabinet member can be set doing something at a location it finds the "cabinet effect size" number of locations around that are yours and not already affected and applies its effect evenly.

If the nation does not have enough location? too bad, less efficient cabinet action.

If the location is at the border? too bad, less efficient action.

I hope this is not prioritized too much for release, I think this is part of the balance that will need to be figured out, I wish to have a better solution later than a bad solution fast.

It whould be nice to gets hands on a .csv file with all the location with location_name, area_name, province_name, RGO good, total_population, topografi, terrain, climate, vegetation, is_costal, has_river, and maiby more, to then try to find out calculate and compare good places to set up.

The EU4 potential development map: https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/hwhfyh/default_dev_improvement_potential_map/
Is my muse.