Pausing during battles.

[hoom]

I used to pause all the time in Shogun, less often but still fairly frequently in MTW but hardly at all in RTW and its mods.

I always pause right at the start of a Bridge Defence battle because you don't get to deploy properly before the battle starts & if you don't pause, the enemy is likely to get a bridgehead before your guys get a chance to form up.

Otherwise I only really use it if I made some monumental blunder like immediately starting battle on a Siege Defence without deploying or if I'm in the middle of a battle & accidentally click wrong, sending my army all out of formation.
Sometimes I just play on though with the assumption that my blunder represents a surprise attack or a dunderhead General.