I've always operated under the assumption that strategic elements refer to plans and actions taken before combat starts. Choice of armor/weapons, hiring help/getting pets, buying single use magic items, that sort of thing comes under the umbrella of strategic options. In 3e, Craft Wands is a strategic choice. You can craft a Wand of Cure Light Wounds and have access to, for all intents and purposes, unlimited healing outside of combat. Which has a huge impact on the pacing of the game.
Of course, at this point, the line between logistical and strategic choices gets a bit blurry, but, since both are out of actual combat choices, it's not really a big deal.
Tactical level choices though are what you decide to do after initiative is rolled. Do I attack target A or B is a tactical level choice.
Like I said, 4e is chock a block with tactical level choices, but has few strategic level ones. AD&D is almost the reverse where you have many strategic level choices but few tactical ones.
Well, I'd divide it up into 3 types, as I said: Tactical being whatever you do in combat, or perhaps things you do before a specific fight as routine things, casting Bless before crashing through the door I would call tactical. Operational would be more things that you do during an adventure that relate directly to that adventure. Once you decide "we're raiding the Tomb of Horrors" then most of the things you do at that point are operational. Strategic would be things your character does that relate to general aims, like maybe hiring a henchman as opposed to a hireling so you can have a permanent sidekick, building a castle, etc.
4e obviously serves the tactical with heaps of options. Previous editions weren't exactly stingy here either, but they didn't have quite the same prevalence of minor options.
I don't really know why you dis 4e's operational options. It has the scrying and divination part quite well covered for instance. It has plenty of powers and rituals you would use for instance to remain undetected while traveling, teleport, fly, etc. There aren't a lot of long-term buffs, and if you stick with stock monsters and fairly ordinary situations there's perhaps not quite as much motive for some kinds of elaborate preparations. OTOH there are plenty of very nice potions, a few rituals, some powers, and a decent number of items, that can be used in an operational sense. 4e certainly doesn't stop you or discourage you from having hirelings, animals, etc. It doesn't really ENCOURAGE that much in the original core books though, which is about the only area that I think could legitimately take some criticism. I think it would be fun to add back in traditional Protection Scrolls as well, they were fun.
Strategic options have always been less the subject of rules than others. Some types are well-supported, others were ignored due I guess to a theory that the game was more about parties going adventuring than stuff like empire building. Honestly, while many players enjoy building things, etc, the majority of groups really do just adventure. Usually with a rare side shot of "we build a tower" or some sporadic henchman development, etc. There are rules now for those things, though it would be hard to say they were very high priority in 4e.
Still, there are great rules if you were to say want to create some mighty ritual, some fantastic item, etc. and you certainly COULD have used skills and SCs to build castles and gain followers, etc. In a way I like the less structured approach. It always felt hokey in AD&D where everything was built into some formula where no matter what your PC did he got XYZ followers from a chart at Nth level, and mysteriously 7th level fighters aren't bad assed enough (or something) to make a castle, but 9th level ones are. Still, once you decide to do something, are some guidelines useful? Yeah, probably. I think the ones for construction and hiring that are in MME and Dragon aren't bad. They do work. I think they could have afforded to be in DMG1 instead of say a useless random dungeon generator and that NPC building rules that WotC never even used, etc.
