Cities in Motion Manual: Buses, Trams, Metros and 12-Scenario Campaign

Laying Tracks, Stops, and Stations for Every Vehicle

Infrastructure in Cities in Motion is built through the construction menu, where you first choose the vehicle type and then its stops or stations, along with rails where the vehicle needs them. Buses only require stops placed along the desired route, since buses automatically pick the best path between those stops. Trams need both rails and stops before a route will work, and rails can be laid on pedestrian areas, grassy zones between multi-lane roads, and parts of parks, which keeps trams out of road traffic. Water buses use piers placed on the waterline and likewise calculate an optimal route between them, while helicopters rely on heliports. Metro lines can run on ground, elevated, or underground tracks with stations, and more stop and station types unlock as time progresses.

Route shape matters most for trams. A tram route can be circular or can end at stations with loops added at the ends so trams reach stops easily. On a circular line served by only one line, stops must be placed on just one side of the tracks. Bus stops, tram stops, and metro stations should be positioned with passenger access in mind, and because buses and water buses find their own best routes between stops, you can place those stops where you see fit. Rails and stops can be constructed in either order, but both are required for a tram route to function.

Choosing Rolling Stock: Capacity, Attractiveness, and Fuel

Purchases happen in the vehicle purchase panel, which doubles as the place to sell stock. A vehicle bought while only this panel is open travels to the depot, where it can sit indefinitely until opened through the Lines panel and assigned to a route. Before committing, the panel lists attributes such as capacity, the number of passengers carried; attractiveness, the appeal a vehicle holds for potential customers; fuel consumption; breakdown likelihood; and speed. Clicking the blueprint icon opens longer descriptions of each model. These figures are the basis for comparing rolling stock across buses, trams, metros, and the other vehicle types.

Energy is a running cost attached to every vehicle, whether it draws electricity or burns fuel. The Energy tab reports how much the fleet consumes and what those costs amount to. Prices move with global financial fluctuations, so favoring vehicle types that use a cheaper energy option can pay off when the balance shifts. The roster itself is not fixed from the start: vehicles and infrastructure arrive chronologically as in-game time advances through four eras from 1920 to 2020, which means later purchases reflect what has unlocked.

Running the Company: Tickets, Wages, Advertising, and Reputation

The company's finances and standing hinge on three adjustable levers: ticket prices, wages, and maintenance percentages. Ticket prices need tuning against changing citizen expectations, since charging too much scares customers away while charging too little reduces the company's value. Well-paid, happy employees improve reputation, and maintenance spending has a direct mechanical effect: a small vehicle maintenance budget causes more frequent breakdowns, which drags reputation down, while regular stop maintenance keeps stops clean and safe and therefore more attractive to customers.

Reputation is a pressure gauge on customer satisfaction, and it falls for concrete reasons: a financial downturn, passengers waiting a long time at stops, frequent vehicle breakdowns, or demolishing city structures. Advertising is the counterweight. The Advertising tab lets you launch campaigns and preview their effects on different social groups before committing; newspaper and street advertising are available from the start, while other campaign types unlock later. Since breakdowns and wait times both feed the same reputation value, maintenance budgets and advertising campaigns work on the same number from opposite directions.

Reading the City: Passenger Data, Lines, and Live News

Passenger data in Cities in Motion is read through map filters that color buildings by the number of blue-collar workers living in them: red marks buildings with none, green marks those with many, and orange, yellow, and light green indicate rising amounts in between. To act on that information, you select a building type the blue-collar workers would likely travel to, with workplaces especially reliable draws. After checking where the workplaces sit, you can build a line between the densest home area and workplace area, connecting the two ends of a commute.

The city map in the lower-left corner shows the whole city at once, with your lines highlighted in corresponding colors: metro lines green, bus lines blue, tram lines red, water bus lines yellow, and helicopter lines magenta, while each stop appears as a bump on the line. A news ticker reports events affecting the network as they happen. Red items cover accidents, complaints, and vehicle breakdowns affecting your network; green items tell of new items available for purchase and other positive changes; and world news and smaller incidents appear in white. Clicking some news items takes you to where the event is happening, such as centering the view on a burning building.

Campaign Scenarios, Sandbox Play, and the Tutorial

Cities in Motion separates its play into two modes: Campaign and Sandbox. Campaign is the story-driven mode, made up of 12 separate scenarios, each with its own narrative and starting situation, set in four cities across the decades from 1920 to 2020. As you play through scenarios, you unlock cities for Sandbox play, and once a scenario is completed you can replay it from the Scenarios mode. When starting the Campaign, you can choose your company's name, logo, and color, or take the random ones offered instead.

Sandbox is an infinitely playable open world without pressing objectives. Cities you encounter in the Campaign become available here once unlocked, and cities created with the Map editor also appear for play in Sandbox mode. Before starting, you can choose the starting year, bank balance, difficulty, and city, along with other options. A separate tutorial map offers a short scenario that teaches the basics of the game; you can replay it whenever you like, and playing it does not count towards achievements.

Building Your Own City and Moving the Camera

Custom cities come together in the Map editor, which the manual divides into three phases: Landscaping, Building, and Decoration. Landscaping happens first, using free-form terrain tools to raise, lower, and level ground and to add forest and water zones before any roads or buildings go down. Building then covers drafting the road and rail networks and placing buildings; roads come in several types that accommodate different amounts of traffic. Every building carries a set number of homes and workplaces, and the homes total determines the city's population, so the layout you draw directly sets commuter demand. The editor also lets you fix the first available starting year, which keeps period-inappropriate structures out of an earlier-era city, and you can set the street names and the style of inhabitants' names.

Camera and simulation control sit on the keyboard. The left and right arrow keys rotate the camera, the mouse wheel zooms in and out, and the middle mouse button pans. Moving the camera uses W, A, S, and D, or alternatively the cursor pushed to the left or right screen edge to move sideways. Speed control is split across the number row: 0 or the space bar pauses the simulation, while 1, 2, and 3 select normal, fast, and very fast speed. Panel shortcuts round out the set, with H for headquarters, V for vehicles, L for lines, G for graphs, R for the roster, Z for the selection tool, C for the construction menu, and B for the bulldoze tool.

First published Oct 22, 2026.