well what *I* see is further evidence that you need plenty of real-life $$ to devote to the game, or you lose out. Oil refineries, let's say. 1 in a quest, 1 in a pack (which costs a big pile of gems), 4 available for, you guessed it, a big pile of gems. if I ONLY wanted those (and without getting more oil buildings, oil production is tediously slow to say the least) then I'm looking at almost 60,000 gems (although, 14K of those are for the bundle which does also have other things.)
The same goes for all the packs - all of them are multiple thousands of gems, and not one pack did I see just for playing or for in-game resources.
Oh and the oil refinery doesn't alter the basic problem of super-slow oil production which can't be buffed - because what it does is to double the oil you feed into it. To make more oil, I need more oil mills, which, oh look, cost a big pile of gems [almost 10K each]. Increasingly, buildings can't be buffed so the only way to produce faster is to add more buildings bought with gems.
And that's just oil. Many new things recently added are costing a lot of gems - and it's not even like gems are crazy-cheap to buy, they're not. Even on happy hour, when buildings start to cost 10K and up gems, they aren't cheap. Not everyone has tons of disposable income to put into the game.
With the continued uncertainty over the flash situation, I wouldn't be willing to invest hundreds of dollars in the game anyway, even if I had the money to spare, which I don't. Frankly, I doubt that even if I did have that money spare, I would be keen to spend that much. It makes a bit of a mockery of free to play. I do also realise you don't HAVE to spend a single cent, but playing like that takes a very patient outlook, as everything takes longer.