Stirring stuff but....

[Reg the Unready]

I know the AI is not good, but have you tried playing a large battle without pausing? You end up macro managing the whole battle (grouping, guarding, free fire and [horror] AI controling (v1.2)). In fact if you try to micro manage units to get 'perfect' flanking attacks etc the rest of your army gets creamed without you even noticing! (Yes, a playback facility would be good). At med difficulty the AI ascends to the dizzy heights of mediocrity - brilliant for a computer, and at v hard, i suspect a large battle would be a real challenge.
(i'm a wimp, and stick to m ificu and to 'free' pauses)

[Old Celt]

I don't think pausing is a sin. Because the action is so much faster than real life, we humans need to be able to pause so we can fill the role of the unit officers just as well as the general. A real life centurion wouldn't let his unit face the wrong way, but we have no officer constructs in the AI to help with that, so we must micromanage the units.

Yes of course it would be a big challenge to run large battles without pausing and using the camera restricted to the general, but this is just a case of tying our hands behind our backs to let the quicker processing computer have an advantage. I wouldn't enjoy that sort of thing, because it is too much like click fest RTS experiences to suit me.