Yeah, it was kind of like that, hah! I don't know yet if the update from a few days ago helped much with that (basically, after the more or less the intended turn where you should get to the king, the game scales the king's stats more dramatically than before, and the king stats early were nerfed, just a tad)
With the right synergies you can always win though. I kind of don't want the scaling to be too dramatic so players can also build themselves slowly and get to really lategame stuff, which can be fun! But maybe the king's scaling could be buffed even more, just a bit?