Why does admin pause the ticks?.
Also, why does the server require maintenance?.

Ticks are paused at the beginning of the era to allow lots of people to join. They're generally paused for 24 hours.

The server saying that it's under maintenance, May just be that your session timed out. It does that after a couple hours.

If you're seeing Server Maintenance messages, then something's interrupted your session. You can check here for more information.

Ticks are paused at the beginning of the era to allow lots of people to join and finde freinds form allainces and build farm , metal mine and gas far to lvl 3 .

And it give time to player to think of his strategy what whod he do 1st and what whod he capture .