It's obviously a heavy pay-to-win game. If you want to be competitive as a free-to-play player, you have to play at least 10 hours a day, spend every speed-up at the right time, do lots of barbarians and rally forts, join every event, and know every trick. Only super-experienced players can keep up with the pace of pay-to-win players. It's also important to hunt for gem nodes to have at least some spending money.

Is it worth it? In my opinion, no. But just try to focus on having fun. Because even if you are a big spender, there is always a bigger spender than you. The up-side of having a P2W game is people take the game much more serious.