Originally posted by slofish_00:

Does pause work in this game? I always log out becuz the few times I tried
to use escape/pause I had an 'event' and came back to a respawned character.

Anyway check your autosaves and use the latest timestamp and matching timestamps
on the 3 files. That's the best you can do in saving locally.
Don't know about cloud saves but they most likely will load the most recent autosave.

Pause works for single player offline mode. You can't pause in multiplayer or on a dedicated server.

@OP with issue you are experiencing is usually (for me) caused by steam. For example I have Civ IV colonization on the original disks and on steam. If I play using the original disks it works flawlessly but If I pause when playing through steam it locks up 95% of the time. The same is true of Patrician III. I have the game on disk and through steam. It works flawlessly when I'm playing with the original disks but hangs up frequently when playing through steam.

Your best bet with any game played through steam that locks up is to log out instead of pause.