I understand that this question is flawed to an extent. I am specifically referring to things like military and naval advances that we see in places like Europe, Asia and the Middle East. European powers made their way into a relatively unknown world and essentially dominated the local populations. My question is how and why? Did Europe catch the Americas at a good time? We're the Amerian nations less prone to war? Had they been dealing disease or famine? Part two of that question is why did the American nations seem to have so few great cities? I can't remember ever hearing about any great cities outside of the Myans, Aztecs and Incans. Do we know of any great Native American cities that we just never hear about or did they just not have any?
It's probably a pretty complicated series of answers, but I would appreciate any information you might provide.
Check out these questions and answers.
In a nutshell, the Americas were actually more advanced in many aspects: agriculture, hygiene, medicine, etc. They were not necessarily behind in warfare tactics; however, European and African diseases (malaria and yellow fever for the latter) spread more rapidly than European colonists and wiped out an estimated 90% of the entire population of the Americas.
Precontact Americans had numerous cities, some in Mesoamerica ranked among the largest in the world; however, we simply don't learn these things in school, and the mass media ignores most of them (while History and Discovery Channels concoct insane programming about ancient aliens and other garbage).
An aspect of precontact American cultures is that many of their building techniques were sustainable, i.e. they weren't lasting; they were built from renewable resources. The Galisteo Basin pueblos were larger than the previous Chaco Canyon pueblos; however, they were made from adobe instead of stone, so melded back in the the land over time. The Amazon was densely populated but has neither stone nor metals in abundance.
A nice example of a surviving adobe city is Chan Chan in Peru. Capital of the Chimu Empire, Chan Chan was the largest adobe city in the world. Its construction began in 850 CE.
Don't mean to plug a book but Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond is 600 pages on this. It's Pulitzer Prize winning and can be a bit dry and repetitive, but completely answers this question and as a plus proves answers layered with racism wrong. Good read.
ahalena gives an excellent answer. But there's a wrinkle in the way you phrased the question that's worth mentioning. Even in the areas where you'd want to say the Americas had a less advanced technology or culture (in whatever sense), that's what you would expect.
Remember that the Americas were a) settled at all and b) climatically able to support a decent population much later than Europe. So even if the Americas advanced "at the same pace" you'd expect them to be less advanced at any given time.