The Tao of Gaming

I think you left out a key use for the gate: you can use it to guarantee last position in the castle. This is obviously useful if you can outbuild your chief competitor (encouraging him to build less, so you can build less keep your options open for next turn). It is less obviously useful if you can both build the same amount, which forces your opponent to expend his cubes to build the maximum (and probably puts you in the driver's seat for next turn's favor).

By corollary, players sometimes fail to contest castle building when another player with more resources has already committed. I think this is a mistake if it lets that player get the building favor cheaply and maintain his resource dominance. (I think you allude to this idea in a later section.)

Both of these issues show up more in 2 and 3 player games.

(BTW, there's an error in the last line about the gate under "Specific Locations" which refers to the Inn instead of the Gate. And the second paragraph under "Flexibility" looks like it was a victim of a hasty cut/paste.)