I don't think "balance" is one of the design goals of this game, except in the sense of making sure to sufficiently simulate expected upsides and downsides. So I don't think "increase costs to offset power of strategy" quite makes sense. On the other hand, the political capital generation and costs system is seemingly the most gamified and least "simulated" system, and thus the most obvious candidate for ideologically designing the right answer to this puzzle game, which is sort of what you're hinting at.