Pause your solo games and pick them up later

A solo (Player vs AI) match used to keep running in real time whether you were there or not — step away for a while and you'd come back to find turns, production and combat had all kept going without you. There's now a pause button for that, in the top bar next to Leave.

Pausing freezes the game's clock completely: no turns, no production, no combat, no random events, and the bots stop thinking. Nothing happens until you resume, so you can close the tab and come back to the exact same match later. Sending a fleet is rejected while paused, since there'd be nothing for it to arrive into until the clock starts again.

This is solo-only. Pausing a PvP or co-op match would freeze the game for every other player too, which isn't something one person should be able to do to the rest of the table.

Play a solo game to try it.