TLDR: Turnbased strategy is rebranded chess.
Well, in mp you can't really say our games are turn based, since people so rarely pause. But in single player I think most people tend to pause as soon as they have a lot going on.
I really feel our mix is the best for the kind of games we make. I was really frustrated when I played "80 Days" for example, as I think that would have been a great pausable game, but as real-time, I found it too stressful for my liking. It has really great reviews though, so I'm probably missing something...
Also, as for pure turn based, they might be easier on your computer at the start of a game, but towards the end, the turns take forever. So I'm not sure which is better on old hardware, I think it will differ, and not be the same answer for every computer/game combo.
I don't think you can equate pausing to 'turn-based'.
Historically, turn-based games developed because it was too hard for the then-current hardware to calculate graphics AND player decisions at the same time without clogging up and causing huge, unplayable lag. So the two got separated completely, necessitating that there be some kind of limit on what you could do each turn ... just so that there would be roughly equal wait times each time the PC had to crunch numbers.
In Paradox games, what you can do is not limited by 'timesteps' (eg one day in EU, one hour in HOI, etc) but by what amount of troops you have, provinces you control, prerequisites you've fullfilled for decisions, events that pop up, et cetera. The possible amount of actions to take at the same time differ widely in amount through time and between players/nations, whereas turn-based games always have the same or very nearly the same amount of gameplay options between players. In fact, it is a staple of the genre to give players a chance at procuring an 'extra one decision' or even 'one extra turn' because they are essentially what dictate the gameplay.
Turn-based gameplay is fundamentally all about exploiting the amount of actions you can take in the best possible order, whereas realtime games (particularly strategy) are all about positioning and timing. Not doing anything when it is opportune to do so is a valid option in realtime strategy; it is a complete and unrecoverable loss in just about every turn-based game. That right there is what distinguishes one from the other, and why turn-based strategy is with complete certainty utterly unable to to provide mechanics as deep as Paradox games do. Within the confines of those mechanics, without the ability of 'not doing anything' as a realistic move, it is simply not possible to
balance against each other the amount of moves that Paradox games have, because each move added to a turnbased game increases its game-tree complexity superlinearly. Think of the daunting task of calculating chess moves as an example, because it's exactly that.
That's why things like ...
turnbased games are just too boring, so no.
... are said.
The mathematics of our reality simply don't support the possibility of turn-based games with wide decision complexity (what we would call 'deep mechanics') yet computational complexity low enough to finish a gameplay session within a single human lifespan ... let alone design and debug it ... because it lacks 'time' as an essential pruning mechanic. Turnbased games are simple and thereby 'boring' by necessity rather than any conscious choice to make them so.
... God I'm happy you guys aren't into making them.
