Early on there are some very good deals to be had, purchasable once only, relative to most of the rest of the time. I assume ('retribution' wise) to get players starting over from scratch to spend some coin (this time).
'Deals' appear to be multiple millions of Profit +%'s, and involve Billions (With a B!) of rss, silver, or stamina, sometimes combined together. Or better than usual boosts, such as 52d/6w. At lowest price point even, not just 25.99 levels. Really, b's of rss at 4.99 / 6.49. Judicious purchase of one or more of these early on can set you up for some time rss and boost wise. Certainly build to level 21, and no yielding for a very long time.
Note that none of these will take you very far study wise. Completing to Ass. 6 or Economic studies will cost multiple millions of gold - you do not want to even try. You will get part way down, run out, then wonder what and why you just did what you did.
Similarly, none of this gets you Legendary material.
Note that there is a pack purchase anomaly that can let you purchase the same pack twice in one session, once. If a pack contains amounts different than the usual, after purchasing it use the X to go back to Offers instead of back to the game - the same pack at the usual amounts will still be present. (Normally you buy a pack and it is removed from the Offers - you cannot buy the same pack more than once per day. The anomaly seems to occur because the levels within the [same] offer are different.)
Also note that higher value packs seem to be worth it over the lower value packs. e.g. The 25.99 stamina contains more than 4 times its 6.49 equivalent. You have to care about having 4 time more (again?) though. Switching pack streams is ... problematic. Apparently once you buy a higher value pack all packs go to that starting value - nothing has interested me to know this, thus I say apparently. Pack prices did go back down from 25.99 at one point, but it did take more than 3 months, I think.
Special occasions seem to be when the real deals appear. Some astonishingly good, some very good, and some only a small factor better than usual.
Black Friday was an astonishingly good deal. multi-B rss & silver together IIRC.
Boxing Week was a very good deal. multi-B rss & silver in separate packages.
IIRC Valentine's Day offered similar separate multi-B rss & silver packages, as well as a combo package that included about double the usual stamina of a dedicated stamina pack (405k or 510k instead of 210k).
Note that none of these special day purchases appears to have affected the type or cost of the regular offers.
Good gold deals seem to close in on 2 B gold, thus 450,000 for the low priced packs. Similarly good deals close in on +2 B (1.83B?) 'Gift of Gold'. Such are most easily spotted because the Profit % nears 3 B %.
Which is all a very long winded way of saying: Jake is completely correct, you don't need a pack, the game changes late last year giving gold at checkpoints provides sufficient gold to keep shields up and VIP status active.
But, as he essentially notes, judiciously buying a pack or 3 (rss, silver, boosts), can grease the grow skids for a time.
None of which gives you materials or Alpha jewels to reduce build / study / train time or increase offense. So you will still be yielding and working on Ass. studies.
