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The user's response amounted to little more than, "Your idea's dumb, because it doesn't suit my play style." That, combined with his imperious "thumbs down" lead-in, convinced me that he was either trying to be a pompous prig or just shooting his mouth off without comprehending the entirety of my argument, either of which would warrant a dressing down. The post of mine to which he was responding was written in plain English, and isn't nearly technical enough to require extraordinary intelligence to comprehend, so it appeared to me that he was deliberately skewing the details in order to have something to ridicule. If that was not his intent, then I am satisfied to let the matter rest.

Since you're going to take that tone: First, I was submitting a suggestion to the suggestion thread, not asking whether it meets with your approval. Second, the point of my suggestion was to eliminate the anti-realism of having one's territory mysteriously truncated, regardless of whether the location is advantageous. Third, it appears that you are intentionally taking my words out of context, in order to have a straw man to beat on. Grow up.

Another idea, if it hasn't been thought of already... Limit the building of town centers to a certain radius, so as to eliminate territories being cut short by the map's border. (Also, perhaps keep everything outside the radius as unexplored, except for the portion of territory that the town center "cuts out" of the darkness.)

In case this hasn't been suggested previously... Add a border to each map, wherein the landscape fades to black with distance. The effects of moving a unit there could vary. One possibility is that the nebulous zone would quietly, but very slowly, transport units to a different point on the periphery (a la trekking through the wilderness, or through foreign lands). Another possibility would be to send units permanently away, for use in subsequent maps of a campaign.

I have practically no programming experience, so eventually I decided that this was one too many complications for me, and gave up trying to learn how to mod 0 A.D. That being said, I would be happy to help out in an advisory role. I'm no Howard scholar, but I do have some understanding of the source material, and have been slowly chipping away at making a role-playing game adaptation of the Hyborian Age, so I might be of use in selecting the best quotations and descriptions. Another facet of my RPG adaptation is creating a 3-D Hyborian Age globe, which obviously opens the door for translation to a 0 A.D. map. I'm awaiting a reply from someone in the REH community before proceeding any further with that, though, as I know that others there have already done quite a bit of work down that path.

What language dialect is used to voice the Spartans in 0 A.D.? I did a forum search for "Tsakonika", but nothing came up. Here is an article that claims the ancient Spartan dialect is still being spoken: https://greekreporter.com/2021/07/10/ancient-spartan-dialect-tsakonika-still-alive/

Yes, ActorEditor must be the one; but then I wonder what made me think it was inaccessible to me. Perhaps when I looked it up, it was something to be compiled on one's own, and that threw me off. Edit: "Note: Actor editor is currently broken on Linux and OS X, see #1553 and #1554. If you're not on Windows, you should use a text editor to modify the actor XML directly."

Quick update: I looked at some guides, then unpacked and examined the mod structure, but found it rather overwhelming. I had expected that all data regarding, say, the hero Lionidas, would be in one directory; however, for programming reasons that I can at least in part comprehend, I see that instead the pieces are spread throughout various directories. Sadly, it appears that the program recommended for easy management of such assets is one that is not native to my GNU/Linux environment, so that saps my enthusiasm a bit, too. All in all, any attempt at this on my own will be a steep uphill climb, so perhaps instead the best thing I can do is lend my knowledge of the Howardian franchise to others more capable of implementing the mods. I'm not giving up on it, just trying to soberly recognize where, if any place, I'm qualified to play a role.

Is there an option in 0 A.D. to make a map with curvature, even if it's only a fragment of the globe's surface? Howard's maps of the Hyborian Age cover an area the size of Europe and northern Africa. Whatever real-world map he traced over to build his fictional prehistoric geography, the distortions would be sufficient to hamper playability if interpreted as flat. A number of visual examples can be found here: https://theblogthattimeforgot.blogspot.com/2012/09/hyborian-musings-mappa-mundi-secunda.html Is there a game technology available for adding spherical maps to 0 A.D.? If so, wouldn't continually aiming the vertical axis of a unit toward the sphere's center allow easy calculation of forward movement based on the steepness of the climb? Number-crunching-wise, would it be significantly more complex to position units that way, as opposed to merely up/down on a plane?

@wowgetoffyourcellphone At this point, I don't even know what a "full 'game' experience" would entail. Personally, I would avoid pastiche elements like the plague. Many of those you mentioned, though, sound like changes under the hood that wouldn't require new art assets -- e.g., giant centipedes in place of rowers would likely be concealed below deck. @Yekaterina I'll look into the resources you mentioned. If it's something I can wrap my head around, I might give it a shot. @ChronA If you have already laid the groundwork, it would be foolish of me to repeat it. I still don't know what I could bring to the table, but perhaps collaboration is the first step. Regarding copyrights or trademarks, I believe that the question could be avoided by merely including a disclaimer that warns people to not download the mod if it's restricted in their area. At worst, the mod would have to be published by a team member who lives outside the jurisdiction. As for the disparity between Howard's ideas and 0 A.D. unit mechanics, I would say design the armies as per the stories, then let the chips fall where they may. In such an abstraction as a computer game, I doubt there's any serious way to gauge which is more accurate. Alternatively, it would be an interesting task to provide certain heroes with auras that boost surrounding units in ways which happened to work out well in the stories.

I've played 0 A.D. for quite some years, and though I congratulate the team on its historical focus, I do at times crave the thrills of ahistoric and even supernatural elements which I originally experienced in games such as Age of Mythology. Recent glimpses of 0 A.D.'s new campaign system have reinvigorated my imagination in that regard, with thoughts of Robert E. Howard's "Hyborian Age" coming quickly to mind. Let me state at the outset that I am no programmer. I may be able to cobble together and modify bits of code, given enough examples, but a mod that transforms 0 A.D. into the Hyborian Age is quite beyond my capability. The same goes for art assets (a bit of SketchUp is all I'm good for), and even the knowledgeable pairing of Hyborian source material with its historical analogues might be biting off more than I can chew. My goal in starting this thread is simply to get a feel for what's involved in creating a mod of that caliber, solicit the opinions of those familiar with both Howard's work and the innards of the game, and hopefully gain some level of comprehension as to whether I would even have a place in any such project, should it someday be attempted. Off the top of my head, here are a few thoughts.... The peoples of the Hyborian Age bear the hallmarks of various real-world civilizations, often stereotypes meant to quickly paint a certain picture in the minds of the early 20th century pulp magazine audience. This means that some modifications might be as simple as altering the names of existing 0 A.D. elements, or patching together different units and buildings to synthesize something "new". An Hyborian Age mod would likely be best as a world map and/or a series of regional maps, all with story features, landscapes, and cities immutably placed. There would no point in mixing it with actual historical factions, except for sheer novelty. This means that the mod might be a "full conversion" rather than an add-on. How that factors into keeping it up to date, I do not yet know. Ideally, the mod would be based on Howard's work alone. There might be room for cross-overs with the works of his contemporaries, and perhaps even the posthumous edits and pastiches that came decades later, but the core project should focus on a purely-Howardian experience.