The central decision of the game is when to play your houses. And you didn't even really talk about that.

Few real decisions to make....Not in my experience, either in tile placement or in disk placement. Of possible interest is the thread:Informal experiment: how easy to find "the optimal disk placement" in various positions?wherein we see that even in the second phase, which people often complain is "automatic" or "obvious", the decisions are not necessarily obvious.

There are times when a piece CAN be played, but the options available lead to many strategic decisions:1) If I play it HERE, will it benefit me more than you?2) Does the placement force my hand to place another farm, and if so will I have a farm defecit compared to yours?3) Does this placement create a situation where I might be giving up first-play advantage (opening up a piece that had previously not been playable)?

My wife's first description of playing Fjords was that it felt a bit like playing Othello, in that you had to think too far ahead. I don't see it that way. I think that the luck of the draw & the fact that a tile must be played if it can, means that you can't always plan too far ahead. Often you have to try to work out how to make use of what you've got.

a strategy game for me is mostly about the mechanics and the replayability. I love good art and design, but function follow form!

strategy (decisions affect the outcome, not chance)