Im just curious, but is there a specific dev-given reason why you can not rename cities and units in the gamepass version of the game? Or is that something locked behind the actual purchase of the game? I cant find any specific information on it besides a reddit post a few weeks ago.

Sound really strange if true. Like why would such thing be done?

Yea. its interesting if it was an actual choice. But who knows. If it was, thats cool I guess.

It's so you can't put naughty words in there, I bet. Microsoft doesn't like naughty words on their X-Box networks.

There have been a few threads about this here as well. The Xbox Network has a Profanity filter which seems to be the crux of the issue - that is why the renaming feature is only disabled on the Microsoft store and nowhere else.

You will need to check with Microsoft/Xbox about disabling that filter and see whether the feature is available in game. Seems like a request made from the Xbox store, not done willingly by the developers.