Do you pause in battle?

[rjacko10]

Or does it make the game too easy?

I pause all the time but I think I'm after more of a challenge now. I just want to gauge what other DEI users do and think..

Thanks

[razorts]

I pause rarely mostly to look where my missiles are flying these arc are killing me, literally lol

[Butan]

I pause rarely because I use "battle realism" option which disable the UI if paused, so I only pause when I have to do something else or I'm tired of frantic action.
Before using battle realism, I was using tactical pausing a lot, but I would recommend even to the worst Rome 2 players to try to never tactical pause, because it will create really tense situations and possibly increase the challenge of the campaign by itself. But I understand that having the tactical pause available is a too good bait when it can save you an army that you have loved. So I would advise "battle realism" option ON to avoid that

[rjacko10]

I pause rarely because I use "battle realism" option which disable the UI if paused

Thanks Butan, didn't know that. I've give battle realism a go. Similar to what Mark of Calth says above I think I would be tempted to use it if I'm ambushed or losing heavily - and if so, where do you draw the line to hitting the pause button!?

Remove the temptation! Will make me a better player too.

[UMCenturion]

Thanks Butan, didn't know that. I've give battle realism a go. Similar to what Mark of Calth says above I think I would be tempted to use it if I'm ambushed or losing heavily - and if so, where do you draw the line to hitting the pause button!?

Remove the temptation! Will make me a better player too.

Yes I just started using Realism mode myself. quite fun actually. makes me have to stay on my toes. was in a battle the other day, outnumbered the enemy, kind of cocky - forgot about my left flank, was overrun by horseman. Wound up winning, but took some serious reforming on the go. was a lot of fun

[Mark of Calth]

I mainly use it to reorganise if I'm ambushed, or my horse archers forget to run away from charging spearmen. Stupid people

[UsulDaNeriak]

I do not care, if pausing the battle makes winning easier. Therefore I pause a lot.
I am interested in the strategic aspect of the battle and I try to do it perfectly. A battle, which was not won the perfect way, is a lost battle from my point of view.
I am too old for fingerwiggling. Why should the reaction time of a human in front of a PC be important for the outcome of an ancient battle? Tactics and stragey is all what matters!

[rjacko10]

Tactics and stragey is all what matters!

I guess this is what I believed until recently. My perfect tactical battles mean I crush the AI and end up steam rolling the game. The fun is limited when there's no challenge.

Losing makes the wins more pleasing.

[BooBooLovesAll]

Only to poop.

[Omen]

I pause alot. I don't understand this mindset of "its cheating" or whatever, I mean if I was an actual general i'd have actual lieutenants in charge of my actual separate squads who could make decisions on the fly when I wasn't available and react to ever changing ground conditions. In this game its just assumed that everyone but me is completely incompetent and unable to do anything but blindly follow the last command they were given. In that kind of environment you aren't just playing the general, you're also playing all of his lieutenants at the same time which is impossible if you're executing a very complex strategy without some pausing. If I wanted to be limited in my ability to execute a given maneuver by my personal APM i'd go play Starcraft and get creamed by Korean's all day.

[ThatWhichThinks]

I pause alot. I don't understand this mindset of "its cheating" or whatever, I mean if I was an actual general i'd have actual lieutenants in charge of my actual separate squads who could make decisions on the fly when I wasn't available and react to ever changing ground conditions. In this game its just assumed that everyone but me is completely incompetent and unable to do anything but blindly follow the last command they were given. In that kind of environment you aren't just playing the general, you're also playing all of his lieutenants at the same time which is impossible if you're executing a very complex strategy without some pausing. If I wanted to be limited in my ability to execute a given maneuver by my personal APM i'd go play Starcraft and get creamed by Korean's all day.

This pretty much sums up my opinion on the matter. I can't stand feverish micromanagement, and I find I am very limited by the controls when things need to be done in a hurry. For example, it is sometimes difficult for me to get the click-and-drag commands to work to move formations (I instead accidentally click the terrain and select a bunch of units) or, even when I use it correctly the click-and-drag formation orders sometimes order troops to move way farther than I intended or out of formation. In such cases, I need a few seconds either to re-form the unit or actually give the order I intended to begin with.

Too often micromanagement is a test of dexterity with the mouse more than strategic thinking, especially since micromanagement is the one thing the BAI can do better than a human.

[Vardano]

Interesting, I pause occasionally in battle, because I'm playing not on legendary for a first time in a long time and obviously you can't do that on L, which really makes battles harder. Let's see if battles are playable on L with new DEI.

[adambomb1]

I use battle realism all the time, campaign on Hard.

[TheRazaman]

Never.

The player already has every conceivable advantage over the AI; pausing is absurd. I hadn't played a TW since Rome 1 originally came out, and so, began R2 with pausing. Yet, I've found it actually hinders your development into a Hannibal-tier commander. Once you stop obsessing over a "flawless" battle (and undoubtedly reloading your pre-battle quick save, multiple times), you'll actually increase your skill at the game. This forces you to react to battlefield developments while enacting counter-measures much more rapidly--as all great commanders in history. You are also far more likely to learn from your tactical errors as nothing ensures a lesson learned as does a loss.

For people new or coming back to TW I'd definitely recommend pausing with the caveat of weaning yourself off it. You'll become a better commander for it. Begin by using waypoints (shift + right click) to issue movement orders to help end dependency on pausing.

[Omen]

The player already has every conceivable advantage over the AI;

If it wasn't for how garbage in general the AI is at making tactical decisions, the multitasking ability of a computer opponent that was actually playing to win (with an efficient strategy) would far outstrip anything a human being could do. I agree that the computer doesn't really force that level of finesse in order to be beaten, but if you enjoy pulling off that kind of maneuver even if it isn't necessary its much easier to do with pausing.

In addition you are right about being a "better commander" specifically with respect to playing against other players in this game. That said calling it being a "better commander" I think is a bad way to phrase this as good commanders would want to improve their tactics and coordination between units to shave off the inefficiencies that are experienced when one person tries to control 20 units at the same time.

[Lieutenant Sharpe]

Yeah I pause sometimes, especially on two stack battles because there is no way I could possibly micro 40 units without pausing. Realistically speaking armies were generally so big that overall tactics and troop disposition would be discussed the day before to the other officers. Once the battle lines were drawn up they rarely changed. At this point the general himself could only efficiently command a portion of his army, the rest was up to his junior officers. Micromanagement from the general himself would be impossible. However, battles did take much longer than in game so realistically I guess pausing is not bad.

[Dynamo11]

Not often, I most recently did it in a battle where I had 3 armies reinforcing and it became a bit of a cluster so I just had to stop and see what was up

[tomFoolery]

This is a game of tactics and strategy, not of reaction timing (if I really wanted that, I'd go play the latest console twitch shooter). I also find it better balanced (in the singleplayer at least) and more realistic. First of all, the BAI, although often dumb as a rock (only CA to blame for that and it's unmoddability), isn't at all limited by any kind of reaction timing to notice what's going on where, only by how fast it can deliver an order and how fast the unit can carry it out, the BAI simply controls, it isn't limited by a "camera" to look at specific areas and to zoom in and out and move about (unless I'm wrong, I could be misunderstanding the functionality of AI in games such as this, if I am, someone inform me). The pause button in singleplayer gives both the BAI and the player the same sort of omniscience. In multiplayer, obviously, it's better balanced without it, where the two players have the same omniscience and just limited by their own individual ability to pay attention and react. Secondly, the player agency in Total War is godlike, and meant to be so by game design. Total War isn't meant to simulate the player being a specific soldier or commander on the battlefield (whereas something like Mount & Blade is), but all of them. Realistically, all these different units, and even every single soldier, was autonomous, and could and would all act and react to battlefield situations on their own, and didn't need the singular top commanding general on the field to notice and act upon their changing environment. It's especially on the ancient battlefield that the importance this singular unit autonomy would make a difference in the outcome, where nobody had any radios to instantly communicate orders over long distances, and it could possibly take some generals aid or whatever minutes to hours to ride over to a flank to relay any orders. For both of these reasons I find my self wanting a pause button in some other RTSs. It's completely understandable for anyone to not use the battle pause feature for their own challenge given the BAI quality, and it's really unfortunate that CA can't/hasn't made one that's even half competent and hasn't opened up modding all that much, as it really is the core and most important aspect of a game based upon strategy and tactics, not graphics cool graphics or bad DLCs (if your itching for an RTS with great BAI, look into Eugen's Wargame series). And it's really silly to hold it against anyone either way because that's just them making a choice about how they individually play the game, so to each their own.

[Jin-]

Never, i played for 2 years before i knew that you could pause in the battle other than pressing esc. Also i find it cheating.

[Alu10]

Never, i played for 2 years before i knew that you could pause in the battle other than pressing esc. Also i find it cheating.

its surely not cheating. if you already know what you want to do, you cant order it instantly you have to select the units which takes time and some ppl are not used to play games that much so ordering the units take longer at least for them. pros may be pleased but not my best friend that only plays rome 2 when in coop with me and he is bad with controls. thats a whole different aspect, having the tactic but the input takes time.

It might be unfair if you have an emergency and pause the game to think of a plan but its a game, everyone can do what he wants and its allowed so..