What do you consider a long game? At Origins the game was in a 3-hour slot, which included teaching, and we finished early (I think by about 20 minutes). This was a five-player game.

There isn't a lot of randomness in Power Grid but there is *some*, in which plants are available for bidding each round. Most things are determined by player actions, yes, and you're trying to calculate whether it's worth investing in things, but that's hardly unique to this game. To me, based on the one game, the planning felt more like a crayon rail game than like chess, if that helps. Plus, the more players there are the harder it is to forecast stuff anyway. All that said -- no, it's nowhere near Fluxx.