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Are all strategy games categorized under either "turn-based" (TBS) or "real-time" (RTS)? Are there strategy games that are neither turn-based nor real-time?

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No, Strategy games have an array of subgenres they can specialize into. Most of them are some kind of form of Turn Based Or Real Time Strategy, but there are exceptions.

The main contenders are Tactics style games which usually take place at a lower level than a strategy game - often focusing on individual units rather than grand force movements. Tactics can straddle both Real Time and Turn Base Games, and don’t really fit into either category.

A clear example of this would be the X-COM franchise which has both Turn Based Tactics and base development strategic resource management, depending on your current activity. Because of the duel-gamemode aspect of X-COM, while it leans towards a turn based style, it doesn’t really fit into Turn Based or Real Time Comfortably.

In a similar vein, Tower Defense games are generally considered strategy games but don’t really fit into the dynamic battlefield aspect of real time strategy games, and certainly don’t fit into the turn based aspect of strategy games.

There are a lot of different subgenres and it’d take too long to review all of them. Instead, I recommend looking at the wikipedia page on Strategy Games and seeing if any of the subgeneres interest you

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  • thank you, this cleared up a lot of things for me, my problem was whether subgenres like Tower Defense are actually a subgenre of TBS or RTS or not. btw is real-time & turn-based considered a pacing element or maybe a time management system for every genre or just strategy?
    – gamingNovice00
    Commented Jul 23, 2022 at 19:57
  • It probably depends on the game, turn based games often operate to allow the player more time to plan out their moves.
    – PausePause
    Commented Jul 23, 2022 at 21:42
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    @gamingNovice00 real-time/turn-based is used in a lot more games. For example, RPGs. However, there is also a real-time with pause which is also common for single player games. It's midway between the other two, since it allows for stopping and thinking about actions. Kenshi, for example, does that and it's also a blend between RPG and a strategy and a base-building game. Other games may lean more on the pausing feature - KOTOR games, for example, use synthetic turns but in a real-time system. They allow (optionally) pausing between actions which can turn them somewhat turn-based.
    – VLAZ
    Commented Jul 26, 2022 at 16:03
  • @VLAZ so then real-time/turn-based & "real-time with pause" are a "time management system" at the core! right? are there any other specific type of system in addition to these three in the gaming teminology?
    – gamingNovice00
    Commented Jul 26, 2022 at 16:45
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    @gamingNovice00 I'm not aware of other common names. Although there are different systems - for example, slowing or speeding up the elapsed time (usually in some base-management games). Or occasionally it might be that time doesn't pass at all until some action is taken. And then time might pass based on the action. Say, you choose to do surveillance which takes 2 hours. However, repairing equipment may take 30 minutes. If you do both, the global time has advanced by 2:30 hours.
    – VLAZ
    Commented Jul 26, 2022 at 16:52

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