Yeah it makes sense that in online multiplayer against humans, you can't pause nor change the gamespeed because that would affect other human players too. So it could just as well be that those options are disabled in the multiplayer component, but enabled in single-player.

Sometimes it is a bit odd, like in Age of Empires 3: I understood that in the skirmish (single-player) games you can slow the gamespeed down, but for some reason not in the single-player campaign. Huh, that doesn't make sense to me. Anyway, thankfully "active pause" was available in the campaign, albeit it is implemented oddly, like that big pause dialog box in the middle of your play area...

When you say that most single-player RTS games should have active pause, do you mean also e.g. Starcraft 2 (single-player campaign), and Warcraft 3? I have played many turn-based strategy games too (like Fallout Tactics, Gorky 17 etc.), but generally for some reason I prefer RTS games. It is probably because:

- I just like how the game flows constantly in RTS games, making the game feel like a real combat situation which I try to command. In general there is less micro-management in RTS games, you don't necessarily have to give exact orders each round to all your units, one by one (like in many TBS games).

- In some TBS games, it becomes too gimmicky in how you try to preserve action points so that you can instantly counter an incoming enemy attack on their turn, try to move just out of enemy unit's reach in your move etc. Too much pre-calculation of action points that somehow feels a bit fake.

- Turn-based games seem to quite often concentrate on small squad tactics, rather than building bases, resource gathering, sending expendable units to destroy the enemy base (rather than carefully try to keep all your squad members alive by tiptoeing or crawling slowly to enemy base from the back entrance; yeah Fallout Tactics all over...) etc.

The first point (flow of the game) is also why I actually prefer the ability to slow down the gamespeed, rather than having to use active pause. In AoE3 it did feel that having to constantly use the active pause kinda broke the flow of the game, and in the paused mode I couldn't always remember which units had already received orders from me, and which orders, until I exited the paused mode to see where units were heading etc. I'd prefer the ability to e.g. slow the game down to crawl with the - button, constantly seeing what units in general were doing and optimizing it on the fly etc.

As long as I can slow it down enough, then I feel I have enough time to do lots of stuff at the same time. This was true for e.g. Total Annihilation, Starcraft 1 and Rise of Nations Gold, at least. While e.g. Warcraft 3 did allow me to slow the game down, it still felt somewhat speedy even in the slowest setting; same for Age of Empires 1-2 IIRC, in case they even allowed slowing the game down (I don't remember).