I almost gave it up as quickly as I started with it, but kept on for a few days.
This game has actually grown on me, and im starting to enjoy it. Even as a freemium player, when you join an alliance you get tons of free resources gifted to you + earn more resources for accomplishing tasks. You also build up loyalty funds & can gather gold that can be be spent in the store.
I use them mostly to buy "speed up's" which can be used to eliminate the waiting on timers.
Once I got into an alliance, and started going on some battles the game got much more fun.
I am discovering how deep the game can get, and the complexity involved, which is kind of cool.
I especially like the Alliance Chat rooms, where you have to weed out spies and avoid betrayals. I already got duped once. Got invited into an alliance, built up about 20,000 troops, only to have the leader boot me out of alliance and immediately attack me as I was gathering food
As a free player, I can see why I would never be a dominate individual player in the game, but being part of an alliance and helping in battles, and moderately growing in power is good enough for me