When i play a skirmish in Age of Empires 3, i save and then resign to quit, the game is then paused?

I believe you're doing it the correct way, at least the same way I do... Whenever you load a game it will always start out paused.

I think it's so that if your in the middle of a big battle, you have time to move your view to where you want it, so you have time to react to what's going on. Not that you're looking at your main city while your troops are running around getting the crap beat out of 'em.

The AI of your troops isn't the greatest in my opinion., so this is a pretty decent feature.

Sounds like there is a problem if you can't just click on "Unpause"...

You can also try to hit the pause button on the keyboard.

On a standard keyboard it's the "Pause/Break" button.

On my laptop it's called "Insert/Pause"

Either way it should be located at the top right of the keyboard.

I don't believe you can do that in AoE3. Sounds like a great idea though. :)