Hey guys!

So this was something I wanted to discuss for a while and I thought why not do it in the official forums so that I can reach out to you, the developers!

As someone who believes to have a firm understanding of the game, I do think that right now political parties influence balance a lot and mainly because there are some which are really good and some which are mediocre to terrible. 

Im going to list the political parties from best to worst in my opinion:

1. Republik: stronger effect on Laws is huge, too big of a bonus. You can basically always decide which political party to have at a small dust cost which is not affected by inflation. Less Law slots than Democracy but for me always enough.
   
2. Democracy: You can't influence the outcome but you can have 3 political parties which should give you all the laws you want. Along with most law slots this is a very strong political party aswell that makes your population happy! Always good for things like overcolonization.
   
3. Federation: 2 Political Parties is alright, you can influence the politics with... influence! It fits the United Empire because they have a lot of it, but for others its not good. The plus 2 colonization bonus is alright early in the game but is neglegible later in the game. It takes forever to get more law slots and you don't get as many as democracy. This is actually detrimental for the UE faction quest. If you choose to stay UE, you have to enact 4 industrialist laws which means you have to research deep into the left side tech tree to even get as many slots. The Mezari only need 3 scientist laws which makes it much easier. Therefore the UE quest choice should also require only 3 laws.
   
4. Autocracy: Limited to 3 law slots the whole game, essentially a better version of dictatorship. No rebellions are possible which means you could technically colonize until you have 0 approval. Its quite fitting to the cravers and I think it has potential mainly because of the fact that only cravers are allowed to "vote".
   
5. Dictatorship: 2 Law slots. You decide the outcome of the vote just like in the autocracy. Too few Law slots. You could do the same with Republik, have better laws, have more law slots and have more happy people because you have 2 political parties instead of 1. This comparison makes the balance problems most apparent.
   

Now lets talk about what could make Autocracy and Dictatorship better while introducing fun new gameplay mechanics: Change how propaganda works!

Propaganda allows you to queue up a "system improvement" in the production queue which increase the support of your current political party over time. The longer you do it, the stronger the support becomes. As soon as you stop though, you are back to where you started, so either you stick with it or be prepared to lose your hard gained approval. This is obviously used to support a big political change, for example switching from militarists to religious when playing the cravers. If you do this, you will get a big approval hit because the cravers like militaristic stuff more then religious actions. 

I'm going to be serious about this: Propaganda is absolutely terrible in its current form and should never be used. The fact that you lose its bonuses as soon as you stop it doesn't really make sense, but the worst part about is that you waste your entire production. 

Why would you ever want to waste your production when you could instead turn it into science or dust? 

Instead: Grant Autocracy and Dictatorship an additional law slot. This law slot is used up by propaganda. You can choose which political party the propaganda supports. 

This simple change could make Dictatorship and autocracy better and change how you can play the game and probably still not as overpowered as strong as the republic. But the main benefit is that you actually get to do what a dictatorship does! Influence the people to follow you without wasting your entire production. 

Especially religious offers such a drastic change in playstyle with the forced content law. I see how the developers tried to build it in for cravers because they do have some religious decisions, but even with that switching to religious is way too big of an approval hit which especially cravers rely on. Using my idea, you can finally make this work! For any faction that chooses to go dictatorship. And maybe this could also be one of many steps to make Horatio great again.

I hope you guys liked my idea, furthermore I hope the developers add this right feature right away.

Interesting prospect.