I get so many ads on that game it’s annoying. And I don’t have TV.
I played one of those games a few years ago and, as a huge fan of Command and Conquer, saw the gimmick right away: After the first few buildings/structures/stuff are completed, things take painstakingly long to build, unless you purchase high speed construction. I mean, something that takes 30 seconds in a “real” video game takes 19 HOURS in one of these games. The minute I saw what was going on I bailed.
I’ll never bother with such tripe.
I’ve played some free games of this type, online, not mobile games. Yeah, the build times are crazy, but it is not just to sell premium stuff. That’s part of the balancing because it is an online multiplayer game. If you could build up quicker, then some guys would be online 24 hours a day to get an edge on the competition. By slowing down the pace, it makes that strategy less effective and gives people who only log on once or twice a day a chance to compete.
It’s still a whole different ballgame from single player strategy games. The actual mechanics are very simplified for deciding battles and whatnot. The real complexity isn’t in the game mechanics, it is in the interaction between players, forming alliances, politics, espionage, and finding good leaders who can coordinate a rabble of online players. That’s where the fun (and frustrations) lie with these kinds of games.