CiM 2.5
When I first played CiM 2, I enjoyed it despite its glaring balance issues. This is my attempt to fix it, making the existing features more viable. Specifically, the slower time makes scheduling relevant because routes don’t take 4 hours to complete, and vehicle sizes and performance are tweaked to increase capacity and give trolleys their own unique niche between buses and trams.
Most rulesets try to introduce realism. This set focuses on rebalancing the game on its own terms, although it does have some factors in common with "real" sets.
Time is slowed by a factor of 7 (15%). Most routes take less than an hour to complete, making scheduling for rush hour relevant/important. Time is still fast enough that you can experience all times of day in a single play session, if only once or twice.
Vehicle capacity is rebalanced to make each type useful (trolleys are no longer useless garbage). Population and depot capacity are increased to compensate for the slower time.
- Buses: 10-30 (no change)
- Trolleys: 30-45 (range formerly covered by trams)
- Trams: 30-60 + faster acceleration + increased catchment (competes with collector metro lines over short distances)
- Monorails: 40-72 (larger capacity justifies capital investment)
- Metros: 100-200/-394 with DLC + increased catchment (handles increased population and simplifies commuter rail)
- Waterbus: 50-100 + faster acceleration (just because they were useless)
- The default schedule needs to be increased. A lot.
- People will get mad if they wait over an hour. Even on low-traffic routes, a small vehicle every 45 minutes is a bare minimum.
- All transport types except waterbuses can handle 5-minute frequency, assuming you don’t have major choke points.
- Metros and monorails can handle up to 1-minute frequency. If you need to run more than one vehicle per 5 minutes, you can add multiple overlapping schedules with 5-minute frequency on each. (eg. weekday, morning peak, etc.)
This has been extensively play tested. The one exception is that I don’t have the patience to play without unlimited funds, so I haven’t tweaked prices much. If you have feedback on that or any other aspect, I’d be happy to hear it.
- New City[dl.dropboxusercontent.com] (5.8 MB)
- A brand new city with three tram lines.
- Ruleset: CiM 2.5
- Money mode: finite
- Map: West City (stock)
- Required DLC: none
Established City[dl.dropboxusercontent.com] (20.5 MB)
- An established city with lines of every type, even waterbuses, making over 3 million per week.
- Ruleset: CiM 2.5, 200% population (as recommended by map author)
- Money mode: infinite
- Map: Dragon Lake
- Required DLC: Metros, Monorails
