The spawn upgrade worked perfectly, I don't understand what you are talking about.
My first build last page was starting with the Drchus. I need to max out the spawn rate of them first so that my gatherers won't be killed by enemy units, as the Drchus spawn too slow if I don't upgrade that. This caused insufficient funds to upgrade the spawn rate of the gatherers, that may be called a "cold start" as I don't have maximum income generation at the beginning of the game.
I explored everything to get the highest efficiency possible. Isn't that what a strategy game is all about? Of course I've tested different builds and have first-hand experience of the effects of the upgrades. I've even tried using stone age tier 1 units in hope of beating the game even faster (because the production buildings are much cheaper), it actually worked for destroying the enemy at stone age but it takes over 8 minutes, because their damage are rather low for destroying enemy buildings. It is more effective to mass some slow-to-build but powerful units, because there is a way (using meteorite) to limit my casualties to match the production capacity.
Of course there are different ways to enjoy the game, I just suggested that it is possible to rush for a quick win. Even late game the strategy isn't any different as you must stop producing resource units to overcome the enemy anyway.