Mmh. I think you're reading it with too much the eyes of the expert, Sombre.
I think the "strategy" section (like all the manual) is to give a grasp of the basics to the newcomers (like me), let them understand generally how the game works, how the stats are good for what, how expanding and being unpredictable helps, etc.
You
need to get those things when you start. They are too useful just to skip them. Later after a couple of games or so you come to the forum and here is the real "manual" for everybody which helps understanding the real strategy and mechanic and corrects some of the manual's errors.
If they were to add a "great" strategy section to the manual, it would have been thousands of pages IMHO
