Reality is that some are simpler than others to see the effects, but to figure out the specifics would be pretty difficult. For example, spending on weapons research will increase your progress up the tech tree, but there are at least six other items you can spend on that also effect that progress at different rates.Quite.
You could get a rudimentary understanding of how things work by targeting selectively with spending certain areas over a number of turns. That would allow you to get a gauge on the possible band range that you could expect per unit of expenditure. The band range wouldn't be all that great, no matter how much you claim otherwise otherwise you would be mooting the whole point of using a complex set of stats to approximate reality.
Factions are less difficult to figure out unless there are other players sowing the seeds of discord among them. If a player figures it all out in 10 turns, god bless 'em, but it will be pretty clear to me that they have. I have built in ways to dampen down game breaking system failures. I had some spending this update that I had not foreseen and needed to adjust one of the trade calculations to accommodate it.
My whole plan is to free players from feeling the need to find a system based edge and let them concentrate on thoughtful playing instead. If it doesn't work, then I will figure out another approach.
From a moderating standpoint it makes the bulk of the stat updates pretty easy and fast and I don't get many "Oh my stats are wrong!" questions. When I do find errors and there are some, I can just fix them next turn.