As someone accustomed to survivor like games, everything is smooth and intuitive. It would be best to ask someone who isnt familiar with the genre for their inputs.
I do acknowledge the absurdity of the cost increase, it was a way to hinder the player and to balance out the fact that the random towers you can buy persists throughout runs. We did lack the time to fully playtest and balance. Will update the game after the gamejam restriction period :)
So far that is a bug we have not been able to fix in time for the submission. If u mean final merge as in final tower tier, the max is tier 14 at which point merging stops.