Everything in games seems to be real-time these days. I much tended to prefer turn-based stuff, I wonder if I'm alone in this or whether people as a whole want real-time
Different people enjoy different games. You're not alone in wanting turn-based games. Fortunately, these days games of all types are released by the bucket-load.
Steam has a turn-based tag to browse games of this type, and more granular tags for different sub-types such as turn-based strategy.
With multiplayer, I'd favor turn-based since with real-time you're optimizing for KPM / keying memorized commands very fast. In single-player I think the pause mechanic as in Dwarf Fortress and Paradox games has not been explored enough for strategy versus AI - it would be a refreshing break away from waiting for "events" to trigger after x amount of years. Otherwise from experience I've found the single-player campaigns in real-time to be very enjoyable, and turn-based to be more often a slog. I don't think that's the popular view for 4x/Civ players but the expansionist micromanagement phases for half the game are not that interesting. Exceptions are the more "tactical" games, but barely.
It's been many years since I played, but I think of StarCraft here - your early mining rush phase lasts a scant few minutes before you're pumping out this or that unit and scouting around the map, and you can pause freely to decide what to do next. The pacing is just nice.
The most frustrating thing about turn-based is switching mental gears to deal with pacing, from deliberate methodological play, to burning through your turns quickly to get to where you want to go next. Roguelikes are like this on steroids. There can be many elapsed turns of nothing in significance and no imminent danger, then suddenly, you're in too deep. Unfortunately in those cases there's no save point.
I recently just got into XCOM and I much prefer or it over most of the other games I have played lately. Honestly I feel like the golden age of tactical/startegy gaming was the early to mid 2000's.
And based on the market I'm not alone, since it seems most of the biggest hype these days are around remastering old titles or bringing them back. Age of Empires, Warcraft 3, etc. (Of course some how most of these companies seem to flub just remastering an old game, but you know)
Roguelikes and "pause-ready" games like Europa Universalis 4 are much nicer at times than something that keeps you attentively shackled like a multiplayer match, but it's apples and oranges.
I feel like I cannot get into many pause-based Paradox games because of the realtime aspects. Even e.g. Stellaris. When I have to manage time flow between pauses it always either feels like I'm pausing too much and I could be wasting less time and playing faster; or like I'm pausing too little and missing some opportunities. Turns provide natural pacing.
The innovative game mechanic seems to be the "supply lines" conceit. Player builds the fort whilst defending the fort. Environmental effects like lava flows and island formation using advanced terrain height management could also add extra volatility. It's like "onslaught mode" for the rts genre ;)
To the long list of keywords, it would have been nice to see "web-based". When do we start seeing web-based games... open a tab and start/continue playing.
