Cities in Motion Collection

For me, this was THE game of 2011. I bought it new, back then, and did not regret it for one moment. This is transport management. You cannot control how the city grows, but scripted events will cause "future expansion". There are enough game-playing tips on forums to sort out almost any challenge you come across, and believe me, there are quite a few serious conundrums that most players won't even notice. The challenge is simple. The people live somewhere. The want to go to work, and they want to have fun. So, your transport systems need to CONNECT homes to workplaces, and homes to retail, and homes to recreation. Running a bus route around the suburbs, will not attract passengers. Because, if your transport network can't get them from A to B, they won't use it. It is easy to go bankrupt. But once you get the basics, it is hard to not succeed. The level of profit might vary, but you should be successful, if you get the basics right. Spoiler tip: the inbuilt railway stations are MAJOR sources of passengers. If you're struggling to make money, connect a train station to almost anywhere, and you'll be fine. Mostly, you'll be using buses and trams. And metros. I LOVE the metros, and you can build them above ground, too. (Might need the USA cities expansion for that - not certain, but you really should buy the expansion Collection - the extra cities add SO much extra play, you'd be mad to not buy it) There are water buses too. And helicopters. And an achievement for making a passenger use EVERY ONE of the available types of transit, for one journey. Line building, and stop organising, is some of the simplest and best I've seen. Create new lines, modify them by adding stops in the middle, or copying the route and then splitting it halfway. It has the most straightforward way of handling lines and stops, although (as is true for most of these games) it might take you a little while to get familiar with it. And with all of the "information" tools and overlays. Make no mistake, this is about organising routes, and frequencies, and keeping an eye on profit margins and congestion. Buses stuck in traffic jams? The people will give up waiting at the stops and walk. If you lay out the routes badly, looping around, your own vehicles can cause the traffic jam, as they get stuck behind each other. If you ever wanted to know if you have enough sense to be a traffic planner, this game will tell you. If you want to play with a trainset, go elsewhere. Despite this game have trains and train stations, and airports, you CANNOT build them. The transit system is that "within" a major city, not "between cities". There is also some serious modding already available. Vehicle stats changed, eras when certain vehicles appear changed, etc etc. Bear in mind, though, that the "numbers" used by the game are somewhat meaningless. They are balanced and work well as released, but make little sense for "realism". So if you mod because a ten seater bus should carry 20, you might seriously wreck the game balance. You might also see LOTS of complaints about framerates. It isn't graphically difficult, though, it's the game engine that is struggling to calculate the actions of ALL of the individual sims. What Simcity V was supposed to do with glassbox, CiM actually does. And it proves how intensive that effort is. Just run the game at high speed between builds, and slow it (or pause) to build and adjust without sluggish framerates. The original game was released with very few bugs. I have no idea how "sorted" the GOG version is, but I'm really glad to see it here. Because. CIM2 was sent steam-only by Paradox, and I missed it because of that. Fingers crossed GOG is finally winning the DRM free battle....

Having played city builders and transport sims for the last 3 decades I jumped on a recent GOG budget release of the CIM collection. There are considerable flaws in the game. Apparently you can't force a bus to take a certain route and thus avoid traffic jams. (The route is automatically designed by the stops.) Constructing tram tracks is often a hit and miss operation and you better save before starting a tram line. I have had situations where it was impossible to put a track on a certain location in Berlin, while opening a saved game and putting the track on exactly the same spot worked. Sending trams on a less utilised track to avoid traffic jams is not possible. The pathfinding for boats is buggy to say the least. I have had the occasion where a boat could go from A to B in a straight line, but refused to find the path in the opposite direction, or by taking an enormous detour (Amsterdam). And last but not least, the information screens with statistics aren't really that clear. I know I have been spoiled by OpenTTD, but a screen with profit/loss numbers per bus or per line could've come in handy.

At first it is a bit difficult to learn all the features (How to build i line for trains), but when I learned how to play it, it turned out to be a really good game. A realistic game with all the features from a real city. (traffic jams ect.) Really nice music and graphic layout. I have been waiting for over 10 years for a replacement for my Locomotion. I finally got it. :-D It is a more serious game than Locomotion, but still full of fun.

I just realized that for some reason, all the catastrophic reviews of this game are associated with the main game only, even though the full game is affected just as much. Instead of copying my full review, I will rephrase it: - The user interface is horrifically poor. I was unable to figure out on my own to do even the most basic things. - There is no real documentation. - The tutorial is so extremely poor that it feels like it must be the result of intentional sabotage combined with a complete lack of quality control. Here are the main things wrong with the tutorial: - It is absolutely essential for playing the game because it seems impossible to figure out almost anything without it. - It is 100% linear with no saving. - It starts with basic details like camera movement for which most people wouldn't actually need it. - Nothing can be skipped. Each time you restart the tutorial, you must suffer again through everything you have just done successfully before being kicked out. - Each time you make a mistake because the tutorial's instructions were wrong or misleading, you are likely to run out of money. At this point you must restart the tutorial -- or just delete the game. - 15 minutes or so into the tutorial, at a point when you can build bus lines and tram lines, you are asked to build a metro line. It's a lot more tricky to do this, and so expensive that I *almost* managed this only a single time. Only to run out of money while trying to add actual trains to it. WTF? If you read the reviews for the main game, you will see that others also report being unable to complete the tutorial (all failing at the metro line) and totally frustrated with the game. Apparently some people don't have these problems, but this is a mystery to me. Did they get a different version?