I didn't really think so, but to each their own! I like the progression from not being able to afford much, up to maxing out upgrades on each tower.
There's a speed multiplier to cut back on the waiting around. I mostly leave it around 8x speed so it's a little faster paced.
Yes. Having centralized ownership (to whatever extent) is a concern for sure, but it's a hypothetical concern in and of itself: "what if the leadership does bad things?" Is different from "the leadership is currently doing bad things."
Decentralization helps. But if the networks effects aren't behind it, jumping from platform to platform when things DO get bad is also viable.