Falling off the train

I posted this as a comment/reply on BGN, but it seems worth preserving:

My most common internal question during design is: How can I make this decision point more nuanced, more subtle and less obvious? Obvious decisions are non-decisions. Early decisions should only make later decisions more difficult and less obvious. Ideally every decision in the game should be a challenge, a challenge both to determine that the decision is present in the first place as well as to decide on a good answer for that decision.