i can not progress unless i pay otherwise the AI will not let me get close. When i do pay it geats easy for 5min the back to hardcore mode
It's not pay to win. I've completed adventure and I've not payed 1 cent. you'll get 2 big walls in the game for now it's to slow down progress so that adventure is not to fast. I've played the game for some time and it's still in development and grindy as hell. If you will like to support it I'm not going to stop you but if you're looking to make it more easy you'll need to pay at every wall. At the end of the day it comes down to you pay time or you pay money that's all one you.
I think that the currency values definitely need to be tweaked. The rate at which the game expects you to spend viagra greatly exceeds the rate at which you can actually get viagra. And they also need to make it so that you can choose to go back to a previously cleared difficulty level if you want. If the game gets too hard, you should be able to choose to go back to an easier difficulty and grind it until you get strong enough to tackle the new level. But you can't really do that if the game forcefully increases the difficulty level each time you clear something.