Aside from the social engineering aspect of constantly undermining the value of "currency" such as "gold" or resources like "food", etc.

The game devs have complete control over the value of things be it buildings, soldiers, items, etc. The ability to constantly release new tiers/soldiers/etc that instantly devalue previous invested time and work all in service to wring more real-world money from addicts...

Of course once too many new shiny things are released, suddenly the climb/intro for new players is too high.

So suddenly, new players are given far more of the original "currency" of gold and resource to skip past the beginning steps so they can come within shouting distance to where investing money would keep them alive.

Well, it's kind of like a perverse fiat currency and a central government with the power to impose regulations and print currency at will.

The fact that the "central government" started printing money / resources once several more tiers of buildings/soldiers/defenses were introduced devalued all that previous investment and work to startling degrees.

To me it was reminiscent of fiat currency and hyperinflation due to printing money.