I've always thought that beyond a few villages simple premium is paying to win, as it saves you so much time, and enables the use of so many scripts. And Account Manager? I have that on one world now and I only have to login to send trains, tag and throw support around a bit. Whereas dealing with those only 25 vills would take up most of my day even if I had normal premium only. It might not be technically pay to win, but it's certainly pay2keepsane.
I'm just going to copy and paste a perfectly good response to this from earlier in the thread here.
No, that's essentially p2p.
Subscription services are not at all the same as microtransactions.
Someone that pays $5 a month instead of $0, isn't the issue, we can all afford $5.
The issue is when someone decides to spend $5,000, since most people can't spend $5,000.
The difference is that premium is a relatively small amount (at least compared to how much some people spend on p2w features) and most importantly, it gives everyone who buys it the same boost. With just normal premium and no p2w features or flags, the limit to how much of an advantage premium can give you is Premium Account + Account Manager + Farm Assistant. That it is very very difficult to remain competitive without a premium account essentially makes tw p2p or a subscription service.
The difference with p2w features, is that the gap on what premium can do for you is way way way way higher. If I have an account with infinite premium I can make every building I queue finish instantly and cost 20% less. I can also buy resources constantly at the market and correct and distribution problems with 1:1 trade with village merchant.
Unlike with just standard premium/account manager features, as I pay more, I get more benefits. So someone who pays 5000 premium points gets way more benefit than someone who pays 1000 that is what makes it pay to win.
The same is obviously not true for premium account + account manager. If you pay way more for that, you just get it for a really really long time.