[JeffR]

Since it's likely to come up in multiple places, I thought I should post an explanation here: we share a geographical database with OOTP Baseball, and it has some long-established standards that we have to adhere to.

Specifically, geographical names are supposed to be English-language and describe entities that exist right now. (Which isn't to say they always do that; Russia, for example, is a huge mess of inconsistency in that regard. I've found cities under names they haven't used since the 30s. We're working on fixing that kind of stuff.)

So you'll run across some things that don't look quite right at first glance, but are that way because of the aforementioned standards. Some examples:

-Old Toronto-area municipalities like North York and Scarborough that got swallowed by amalgamation in 1998 are all lumped under Toronto now.
-Similarly, the municipal reorganizations in Quebec in the early 2000's changed and eliminated a lot of familiar names. Chicoutimi is Saguenay, Hull and Aylmer are Gatineau, etc.
-People born in Port Arthur and Fort William prior to 1970 get Thunder Bay as their birthplace, despite it not technically existing at the time.
-Russians born in Soviet-era Leningrad get St. Petersburg as their birthplace, same with every other reverted Soviet placename.
-Rod Langway's birthplace, since someone's sure to point it out, is usually listed as "Maag, Taiwan." No such place, MAAG was actually the acronym for the Military Assistance Advisory Group, the US Army advisers in Taiwan. So his birthplace in the game is listed as Taipei.

One thing I did have to fudge a bit: ghost towns. Places that are now largely abandoned got a nominal population (5) so the database accepts them as valid. Not totally unrealistic, there are still a few people living near places like Cassiar or Sandon, B.C. The only totally phony one is Sokolče, Slovakia, Stan Mikita's hometown. It's now underwater after a dam was built nearby, so if you see a rookie with that as his birthplace...well, he was born on a boat, OK?