EnduringPaper: I don't remember the command to skip the intro, but you can disable the intro by going in conf.ini and set "Intro=0" under [game].

As for escape not working, I don't know. Only thing I can think of is in Users/doe/settings.ini, if there's "Escape=deactivate" anywhere in there (I guess it should be under [HotKey orders] but I don't know if it's only for the orders menu.) If that's not the problem, then I don't think I can help you any further.

EnduringPaper: I think it should be "deactivate" in the settings file, as it is so for me. However I discovered it should be "activate" in the conf.ini under [HotKey gui]. Maybe it's somehow missing from your conf file, or assigned to something else?

You could also verify if perhaps you have accidentally assigned the escape key to another control? ...Well I guess it is assigned to bring up the orders comms now that you have changed it in the settings files, if you didn't change it back haha.

Now that I think of it, I sometimes have a problem where the mouse is not responding in the game (usually from having focus on another window as the game starts). Perhaps you're experiencing something similar with the escape key? Try to alt-tab out of the game (and I suppose press escape once while tabbed out of the game, for good measure) then return in the game and see if it works.

I hope any of these solutions work out for you.