What kind of game is it anyway?

At WBC this year I was introduced to a variety of games, of which two in particular stood out:  Orleans and Terra Mystica.  Orleans was enjoyable, and fairly obviously an engine game where you have to set yourself up to have lots of powerful actions to generate points in the later game.  I liked it a lot, but don't have a lot more to say about it.

Terra Mystica, on the other hand, was a bit confusing.

I showed up for a TM heat and Umbra had approximately 2 minutes to teach me the game.  If you know TM you know that you can't possibly teach it properly in 2 minutes, even to someone who picks up games really fast.  What Umbra managed to get across to me was that the points scoring turn tiles are the key to the game, and I should just listen to them and do whatever they say.  Umbra insisted that TM pretends to be an engine game, but it is lying, and it is instead a game where I build points based on what the turns tell me to.

Cool.  I didn't know what the resources were, or in fact what most of the game mechanics were, but I was ready to play.  Obey the turn tiles!  I can do that!

I ended up leading through most of the game but ended up third in the final scoring.  For someone who really didn't understand how most of the game even worked before starting to play this is a pretty solid result.

Later on I played another game of TM and ended up winning by a substantial margin, though I think I got kind of lucky in terms of being able to capture the territory I needed.

Afterwards I talked to Pounda about TM and he gave me a totally different speech.  Pounda told me that people will tell you that TM is not an engine game, but in fact it is an engine game.  You get a temple, buy the favour that gives you bonuses for each dwelling you put down, and then put down as many dwellings as possible.  Don't even worry about what the turn tiles say, instructed Pounda, just get your dwelling engine online and win.

So now I have a conundrum.  Two strong players gave me different instructions.  Now, Umbra did tell me that the favour that Pounda liked so much was the best one, so they aren't that far apart, but their philosophies differed quite substantially even if their actual game choices seemed similar.

I want the game to be the way Umbra paints it.  I like the idea of a game where you have shifting priorities in each playthrough so you have to develop a different strategy based on what each set of turn tiles brings.  So I know what I want the game to be, the question is:  which game is it really?

Is TM an engine building game where you just focus on doing the same thing each game, trying to be slightly more optimal than your opponents, or is it a game of shifting priorities where each playthrough you must develop a new strategy?  Damned if I know, I have only played twice.

I guess the solution is to play it one hundred times until I actually know what I am doing.  Rough work, but somebody has to do it.