It's a heavy MMORTS with relatively not-insignificant P2W. There's limiters in place to avoid instant P2W, but I managed to reinstall a Windows (so that I could play some MtG Arena and I said, why not check this).
1) You can't win on your own. You need to be part of a large and active alliance.
2) The difference between a player who connects twice a day and one that connects every 2-3h is large. Skip a day or two? You'll stay behind for most of the game (if you're not outright blown out).
3) The difference between a player who purchases items at the store and one that one uses free stuff is also very large. There's limiters - most of everything you can purchase has X/day or X/week or even X. But even the limits can basically double your development speed, and when you are essentially engaged in a race to have more powers than your neighbors, you lose fast.
The people who develop faster tend to be recruited in the major alliances, so the top alliances are all massively P2W. It's better to have a player who plays often vs one who only P2W, but the ones who pay tend also to be the ones who play.
4) There's a number of advantages you can accumulate from game to game. There's a kind of research with boosts, and it stays between games. So, to compound that, players that have been there since the first beta will have relatively significant boosts that you don't have. The early versions are easy to get, but you've got the fifth stage that requires 14 days (I think). And there's lots covering every aspects, from speed of construction to size of fleets to amount of materials produced.
(note that you can't use all of that tech - you only pick a limited set. But the game almost requires you to switch those - which costs cards that you have only a handful per game, and the rest costs mney)
TL;DR: P2W poopsocker dream.