They will need to implement something to protect our troops, or the game will slowly wither away. I fear this will always be a pay to win game, the core design is that you can buy every upgrade and unit with Steem, I don't even know what is the cap for buildings, there can literally be infinite levels of HQ upgrades and there will always be people with extra cash willing to pay for that. Like you said with time the bugs will be ironed out, and we might have something people will enjoy playing pay to win or not.