Just tested and I don't enjoy the gambling roulette, I prefer the old cattering style.
Although I was able to get much further than with fighting (6th chest vs 2nd chest), after third failed trial of doing the 6th chest I gave up.
Maybe I can gamble for the catalysts if they are in the first chests, and if the price is not too big for endgame city (on beta I have Halfing city, on live I have finished tech tree) once this gets to the live servers, but I will definitively not fight with so insanely large armies and the bribing roulette allows me to only gamble the first few chests.
Edit: After one more attempt I went through the first 8 chests, getting Mana plant from the last one.
And now I can enjoy the 3 hrs timer (which means I'll continue tomorow afternoon after work because in 3 hrs I'll be sleeping and then I'll have no time to play spire until afternoon, so 3 hrs timer changes to almost 20 hrs).
Altough my strategy in this roulette is better now, I still don't enjoy it.