the notion of using time directly in gamedev has always confused me; it feels like the correct answer should be to simply have a notion of turns, and a real-time game simply iterates over turns automatically. And then so many turns are executed per second

It's a simulation; why should clock time be involved to begin with? The only things that should care about clock time are those that exist outside the sim, e.g audio

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maxbond 2 days ago | parent [-]

Simulation can proceed in logical time but animation is necessarily tied to wall clock time in order to be perceived as smooth and consistent by a human viewer.

	▲	setr 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		In that case, animation belongs to the same category as audio — it exists outside the simulation state. But I’m not 100% that’s even true; in the context of replay, I imagine it’d be more appropriately part of the sim for it to scrub properly. In the context of networked games with client-side prediction, I think it’d probably be key frames tied to logical time and intermediate frames tied to wallclock