Quote Originally Posted by gardibolt
I do consider pausing to be a cheat, though.
An interesting point - I had never even considered that.

I use pause a lot - on the grounds that:
- the battle camera is a little awkward to use (I think I need a better mouse)
- it is often hard to pick out your target when units are moving and intermingled
- the AI has the advantage of omniscience and instantaneous response.

So I don't loose much sleep over it.

However my house rules are:

1) Never reload - however painful (and it often is - loosing half your crusade due to poor rout finding, your king dying fighting peasants, none of your merchants ever surviving a takeover attempt). Coping and recovering from my mistakes is part of the challenge.
2) Don't use exploits you can avoid - by this I mean coding errors or omissions that clearly shouldn't be there and that the AI does not take advantage of (all documented above)

I would certainly go along with the view though that in SP it is none of my business how anyone else chooses to enjoy their purchase...