"Turn-based" is a little tricky, but close enough.
Mostly, I still aver that there are fundamental psychological differences between:
- quick thinking (tactics / action)
- detailed thinking (operations / logistics)
- deep thinking (strategy / planning)
- holistic thinking (grand strategy / vision)
This is what drives my opinion that, if your goal as a game developer is to make a game that people who like strategic play can enjoy, you are undermining that goal if you impose a real-time constraint on players. Real-time fun is tactical fun. But requiring tactical thinking makes deep thinking -- gathering data, analyzing intel, perceiving patterns, conceiving plans -- harder, perhaps even impossible. Meaning, less fun.
What I hope comes through in this re-explanation is that I'm not arguing in any way that there's anything inherently bad or wrong about a real-time mechanic. There's not. The only question is whether that mechanic makes your intended gameplay experience more fun or not.
My argument is that if the intended experience is strategic fun, then preventing players from having the unrestricted time necessary to do deep thinking -- as a real-time mechanic does -- is a wrong choice because it undercuts the intended play experience. It encourages and rewards something other than deep thinking.
This is not to say that any game that says it's "strategy" but imposes a real-time mechanic must be a bad game. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying it won't be as much strategic fun as it could be, and that's a shame.
I wish the best to
Dawn of Andromeda's developers, as I do anyone who works to bring a game into the world.
