It seems like Hercynian Forest was the historical name for the area we now call Ardennes. The Ardennes Forest and Black Forests of today were once part of a much larger forest system in ancient times called Hercynian Forest. It was mentioned and described by many ancient authors, so it might be a nice nod to rename it.
Yeah that's a fair point I think, but I don't believe we need to change this further for A24 at this point. If you're playing 0 A.D., you probably can call back whoever called you since it's unlikely to be urgent work stuff
In A23 using the hotkey pause the music was paused as well, which allowed me to for instance take a phone call or do some other work which depends on sound. A simple example could be watch a video on a different virtual desktop.
"Background pause" refers to the window having lost focus? If so this IMHO should behave as I stated in the OP.
The rating algorithm is fine. The problem is the lack of season resets, ability to unrate 1v1s and/or lack of depreciating points for inactivity.
Also, sample size. Any small community will have inherent unreliable rating numbers.