I bought the upgrade for $80 before the collector and I soft locked myself
I haven't played many incremental so I might not be the target audience, seems easy to get filtered early if you buy wrong things (is that normal for this genre I dunno). Seems like going from 0 enemies to every village sending guys at you at once is a bit too much of a ramp-up.
Also I still think the castle should be evil and the collectors should be goblins. The whole game makes more sense if you are the necromancer.