So I finished the game, true ending included. Obviously there's a lot more to discover (didn't get to the sphinx for example), but I'll leave it for...
Single player games offering solutions to problems they create on purposes via microtransactions are by default predatory game design in my opinion....
What's even sadder is that they would have probably gotten away with it (people still out there using the "then don't buy it" argument), had the game...
I should preface this by saying that I've ended up with a very deep squad, where the second (and possibly third) string would probably win the league...
Regarding the second point, can't say I've been in that situation before, but it sounds like some sort of bug. One kind of work around I could think...