Puerto Rico is fun.

The rules are very quick and elegant but the gameplay seems to have lots of strategic depth. I'm pretty sure you and Jael would like it. The rules are pretty different than anything else, but at their heart they involve everybody taking roles as nation-builders. Every turn each player takes a different role. Taking a role allows everybody to perform an action, but you get some kind of edge for initiating the action. For example being the Builder lets everybody build, but you build first and get a discount. There are economic incentives to take the roles that haven't been used in a while so sooner or later everything gets done. There's lots of balancing and lots of paths to win. Good stuff.

(Not for everybody of course. When I tried it w/ Eric, Laurie, and Denis, Eric said, "Because this is an economic game, I will probably never play it again." Oh well.)