This first expansion for Cities Skylines II is a year overdue. Personally, I was far more optimistic about it than most other players. Though that review was biased by the fact that I never got any of my cities up over 100 thousand population, and so wasn't running into many of the problems that other players experienced with the simulation breaking down in large cities. I think my largest city was somewhere around 70-74 thousand population at the point that I published my review.

The game launched in such a messy state that Colossal Order had to devote so much time and effort to fixing core problems that they had to keep delaying the expansion. They were in a really hard position, as publisher Paradox had sold the expansion with the deluxe editions of the game in pre-orders. This content was promised to players, and was sold to players prior to the game launching. It's not like Colossal Order could just not release it.

This stuff is exactly why pre-order and "Deluxe Edition" cultures in gaming need to die. With all games being available digitally (and most games being purchased digitally), there is no risk of a supply shortage, and so no reason to ever pre-order a game. Offering pre-orders and pre-order bonuses is just a cynical, anti-consumer trick of publishers to try to get more money out of gamers. Sell the product before it's actually for sale, and know that you're guaranteed to get at least that many sales, even if the game turns out bad.

Colossal Order did say that, due to the delays, they tried to fit as much water-based content as they could into this expansion. They also claimed to have put a lot of time into fleshing out systems and testing the new content to make sure it all worked. I had hoped that this supposedly more holistic approach to this expansion, and the extra time given to it, would alleviate many of the complaints that I had with the first game's expansions being so limited in scope. I'm sorry to say that it didn't quite work out that way.

Mmm, fish milk...

I'm also sorry to say that, while I was working on this review, Colossal Order and Paradox announced that Paradox has fired Colossal Order from its development duties on Cities: Skylines and Cities: Skylines II. After the end of this year, development of the game will shift to Paradox's in-house Iceflake Studios (the developer of Surviving The Aftermath). I had played Surviving the Aftermath. I thought it was fine, and largely had a good time with it, even though I never finished the campaign and never got around to reviewing it. So it's possible that Iceflake might handle Cities: Skylines II development just fine. But this situation sucks. Colossal Order created Cities: Skylines. It was their game (and series). For Paradox to yank it away from them in this blatant act of IP hoarding is just cruel, greedy, and evil.

I hope that Colossal Order survives, that they are able to retain most (if not all) of their staff through this, and that they come back swinging in a few years with a new city-building game that will rival Skylines. Maybe, in the long-term, competition between Paradox and Colossal Order will lead to a renaissance in modern city-building games, as each tries to out-do the other. But in the meantime, it's likely going to be a rough few years for Colossal Order, and I wish them all the best.

Repeating the first game's mistakes

The feature previews for the Bridges & Ports expansion sure seemed promising. New modular ports, bridges, drawbridges, proper quays and piers, a fishing industry, offshore oil drilling, waterfront zones, and a bunch of new parks and landmarks. It sure seemed like a fairly comprehensive and holistic feature suite, on paper.

But then I actually got to playing it, and almost immediately started to notice that there were things that I had hoped or expected to be included, which simply weren't. Despite the supposedly-holistic approach to water infrastructure, this expansion is still missing 2 key pieces of water recreation infrastructure that I've been asking for since the original Cities: Skylines over a decade ago. There are no public beaches, and no marinas. Yes, you can technically build a makeshift, superficial marina using the quays, piers, and a couple of boat props, along with any other Detailers' props or decorations. The piers do seem to provide some passive beautification, but nobody ever actually uses these structures that I might spend hours putting together. People don't walk the decks of the piers, or actually sail the prop boats out into the water. Would it really have been too much to ask to be able to create a simple seaway and "pleasure cruise area" for a marina, similar to the way that fishing areas are designated?

You can make makeshift marinas with quays, piers, and boat props, but nobody uses them.

The lack of public beaches really hurts the aesthetic of any coastal city. There are some props that can be placed on sandy beach areas to give some appearance of a beach. Maybe some tents here and there, some lawn chairs, and a few other such objects. But there are no beach towels, surf boards, sand castles, lifeguard towers, or things of that nature. Most importantly, just like with the makeshift marinas, nobody will ever actually go to that beach. People don't walk along the beach, swim in the water, sit in the lawn chairs, or play in the sand. The beaches are just completely lifeless.

I was starting to wonder if maybe Colossal Order was done with Cities: Skylines, or they had moved on to development of a full sequel. After releasing two expansions per year since the game's launch in 2015, we've now gone almost a year between expansions. The last one was the Campus expansion last May. Now here we are with a new Sunset Harbor expansion.

The announcement for this expansion (a mere week before its release) got my hopes up in a similar fashion to the Snowfall expansion. I thought that Sunset Harbor would add a slew of features that I had been longing for in the game for a long time. Sadly, Sunset Harbor disappointed me in much the same way that Snowfall's lack of a seasonal cycle and poor implementation of ski resorts did. Sunset Harbor lacks almost all of the things that I had hoped for, and it continues a trend of Skylines expansions that add new mechanics or content without revising or enhancing existing mechanics or content to utilize the new ideas.

When I saw the title of the expansion, I thought for sure that this would be the expansion that would finally introduce public beaches! No such luck. There's no public beach area. Sunset Harbor (despite having "harbor" in its title) does not introduce modular passenger and freight harbor areas, or upgrade harbors into a leveled industry like Industries did with agriculture, forestry, ore, and oil. I still can't daisy-chain my harbors to send shipping routes up rivers or canals, despite the fact that the existing passenger ferries and the new fishing industry can. It similarly doesn't convert tourism and leisure into leveled industry or commercial areas.

As always seems to be the case with Skylines expansions, I'm torn between whether I should review the expansion from the perspective of what it actually brings to the table, or from the perspective of failing to meet my own hopes and desires for what the expansion should be.

One of the things that was missing from Industries

Sunset Harbor does, however, check off a couple items from my wishlist. At long last, it has provided a desert biome map! As someone who lives in the American Pacific Southwest, I've long been frustrated by the inability to create a city that looks more like the familiar landscape of my own back yard. Now I finally can. Sadly, it's only one map, but the asset editor that's always been included in the game will allow me to make more if I want to, without having to resort to downloading mods that might destabilize the game.

I've long hoped for a desert biome to be added to the game.

The big feature of this expansion is also a feature that I thought was missing from the Industries expansion. I complained that Industries only added new infrastructure that replaced the existing agriculture, forestry, ore, and oil industries that have always been in the game, and didn't bother to add any new industries. Parklife, by comparison, added a couple new types of parks that hadn't been in the game before, including nature preserves and an amusement park. Personally, I thought that the most obvious option for a new industry to add to Industries would have been a fishing or aquaculture industry. Well, now we have a whole expansion that has added that one idea.

The new fishing industry doesn't follow suit with the Industries expansion industry areas, or the Campus university areas. You don't paint aquaculture areas and then grow them and level them up. There's no complicated production line or logistic element. The different types of fish that you can catch also don't do anything different. There's no fancy factories that consume specific types of fish (like a pizza factory that consumes anchovies), or that combine your fish with other types of fish (like a fish stick factory), or with other industry products to create a more valuable luxury good (like combining fish and seaweed with crops to make sushi).

Aquaculture does not level up or have production lines like other industrial sectors.

Instead, there's a handful of fishing harbors that act as resource-extractors, and then there's exactly two buildings that process or consume them. Your fishing harbors can either sell their fish to a market to be sold directly to consumers, or the raw fish (regardless of type) can be shipped to a factory that processes the fish and distributes them as generic goods to send out to commercial zones. In lieu of either the market or the factory, the fish will be exported to other cities for a small amount of money.

That's it! That's everything that fishing has to offer!

...

Continuing my series of strategy guides for the civilizations of Brave New World, I have now moved onto legacy civs whose strategies have changed somewhat due to the expansions' features. One civilization that received an indirect upgrade by the changes introduced in Brave New World is Dido's Carthaginian empire. Even though her actual ability didn't change, the new trade route mechanics changed the function of the harbor, which subtly changes how Carthage should be approached by Brave New World players.

In the ancient world, the Phoenicians exercised near absolute dominance over maritime trade in the south Mediterranean. Phoenician control was centered in Tyre, whose colonies paid tribute but were not directly controlled by Tyre itself. When Alexander the Great destroyed Tyre in 332 BC, the Phoenician colony of Carthage began claiming control over Tyre's former colonies in Sicily, Sardinia, Morocco, and Iberia, and established itself as the commercial center of the Western Mediterranean. This economic success and naval supremacy lead to three Sicilian Wars with Greece and three Punic Wars with the Roman Republic. The third Punic War resulted in the sacking and conquest of Carthage by the Romans.

Historical records of Dido are very limited, and historians debate her historicity. The sources available indicate that she was the daughter of an unnamed King of Tyre, who named both her and her child brother, Pygmalion, as heirs. But when the king died, the people refused to acknowledge Dido as heir, and only Pygmalion was recognized. Pygmalion had Dido's husband, Acerbas murdered in order to claim Acerbas' vast wealth, and Dido stole away Acerbas' gold and fled Tyre along with some attendants and senators. She landed in North Africa, where a local Berber king granted her an amount of land that she could encompass with a single oxhide. So Dido cut the oxhide into small strips and encircled an entire nearby hill upon which the city of Byrsa was founded. She would later also found the city of Carthage before sacrificing herself in a pyre in order to remain faithful to her deceased husband and escape a marriage proposal from the Berber King. She would later be deified by the Carthaginian people, making it difficult to determine if the stories are genuine or just legend.