Sugarme said:
Stoning the ground around with pool will help. We used to do that when we were digging foundations for buildings and the weather called for heavy rains and we were not ready to pour. Instead of letting it rain then having to muck out the bottom of the trenches (somtimes by hand if they were in the middle of the building now) it was a lot cheaper and easier to call in a couple of tons of clean crushed stone and use it to hold to bottom.
A quick tutorial on how soil compaction works. Soil will compact the most at a certain specific moisture content. If you try to compact it when it is too dry, it will further subside under load if it gets wet. If you compact it when it is too wet, as it dries under load it will compact more.
If you compact it at the ideal moisture content, and then it gets wet later, that is not a problem - unless it has irregular loadings on it. Then it begins "pumping". As you walk around on it, it will actualy beging to expand and get as others have said "squishy" as water begins to work its way into it void spaces (really it becomes plastic, if there is any sigfinicant clay in it)
The pavers under the legs serve to spread the load. Without getting into the details of it, a spread footing behaves differently than a point load. 25 lbs over 25 square inches behaves differently than 1 lb on 1 square inch. Putting pavers under your legs will decrease your psi and also give the benefit of a spread footing (at least for pool loadings)
You can try running the compactor over the pavers. You will get a better result by taking the pavers up first. But unless you have some very uncompacted soil there, running it over the pavers should work. If you have any big (fist sized lets say) rocks under the pavers you may crack one by running the plate over it.
-dave