On Thursday, Cities: Skylines developer Colossal Order released yet another expansion for their popular city-builder. Sunset Harbor introduces the fishing industry, new mass transit options, and important city services. Among the new key features are

• A new fishing industry with control over fishing boats at sea and fish farms, adding a new commercial element to your city.
• New water treatment plants that process waste water for additional uses.
• New bus systems, including the Intercity Bus Service for transit between cities.
• The Aviation Club building, which encourages small plane owners to take part in recreational flying.
• Five new maps.

Let’s see what a seasoned mayor can achieve with these items in his toolbox.

Excerpts from the mayor’s journal

Ah, nothing smells better than a brand new plot of fresh, unspoiled land. It’s like a clean sheet, just waiting to be drawn on with fat crayons.

What’s even better is that no-one knows who I am around here. If they knew about Springwood, my previous attempt to create a thriving city, the mob probably would chased me out of the county already.

But things will be different this time. In Springwood, I tried to make everything as green and techie as possible. This time, I’ve decided to just go with the eventual flow, and see where that leads us. I can only imagine it will result in unbelievable success and daily ticker tape parades.

This particular area is called Marble Cliffs. Exactly why is mystery since there are no cliffs and no marble. But we’re rolling with it, and Marble Cliffs will be the name of the new city. I can already see the TV commercials:

Did your previous home collapse under the weight of a massive asteroid? Start anew in Marble Cliff!

What can possible go wrong?

March, 2020

First things first.

We need the basics: Some roads, a power plant, power lines, a pumping station, a water drain, and plumbing to connect it all. Then, we’ll designate some residential, commercial, and industrial zones, and just sit back and wait for people to start moving in.

The city is quite limited on the financial front, and it will take some time before we get a positive money flow. To spend our money as efficiently as possible during the first few months, I’ve tried to study the work of some other mayors. But that turned out to be too much work, so we’ll follow the same procedure as in Springwood: Winging it^TM!

In our previous city I did one mistake that I’ll try to avoid now, though. Separating residential, commercial, and industrial zones is a good idea. Marble Cliffs’ residents shouldn’t have polluting factories in their back yards, for instance. So we will be creating our industry away from people’s houses. But we also want to make sure people don’t have to purchase groceries, Blu-ray players, and pets, so instead of having large, separate commercial districts - like in Springwood - we’ll sprinkle the residential areas with commercial zones.

July, 2020

People are starting to move in, and while the city isn’t exactly bursting with life yet, we’re certainly off to a good start.

It’s been raining for two months straight, but the people of Marble Cliffs doesn’t seem to mind (too much). At this point, we have everything basic up and running. Houses have been built, jobs are available, shops are opening. Our bank account is start to run dry, but we’re seeing a minor surplus in the budget. Also, we’re only 50 residents away from achieving little hamlet city status, which will grant us a nice money bonus.

August, 2020

Marble Cliffs has grown to a “little hamlet”, and with that comes a lot of interesting options. We can now take out loans (which we will try to avoid if we can), and we can start to tax our residents (which we will begin to do immediately). With the tax money, we can build an elementary school, a medical clinic, and landfill site to get rid of the garbage bags people leave outside their houses.

But we also have to save a little money, so we won’t be building anything before it’s really necessary. Right now, for instance, there are no sick people in our little hamlet, so I see no good reason to build a medial clinic yet. Call me when someone gets a fever.

We’re looking out for the kids, though. Out of our current population of 557 Marble Cliffians, 97 are current eligible for an elementary school education. Instead of having them roam the streets, being up to no good, I’ve ordered the construction of the Stone Rock Elementary School for Average Children.

September, 2020

To get the money flowing in a bit faster, I’ve raised the taxes for everyone in the city from 9% to 10%. I’m not sure how it will affect people’s mood, but according to my advisors, only 35% of them like me now anyway so I guess one measly percentage tax increase won’t matter that much.

In the beginning of the month, we saw our first few citizens come in need of healthcare. History have taught us that just ignoring ill people is a bad decision, because discases tend to spread and then some people die. Because of that, we’re building a state-of-the-art medical medical clinic here in Marble Cliffs The family who lived in the house we bulldozed to make room for the brand new Feel Better Soon Wellness Center got really mad, but the neighbors didn’t seem to mind. Happy faces all around!

October, 2020

Marble Hills now has 900 content residents! That makes us a “worthy village”, and the county has granted us a nice money bonus, and access to some brand new blueprints. We can now build police stations and fire houses, none of which we’ll bother with right now. Instead, we’ll issue a smoke detector distribution policy, and hope that people discover fires before they grow so large we should have had a fire house in our fair city.

November, 2020

It turns out the smoke detector distribution policy wasn’t free, but costs us almost ₡1,000 a month. So that’s off the table. Instead, we’ve banned any kind of open fire across the city. There will be no more romantic candle light dinners, but there will also be fewer houses burning to the ground.

Without a police force, the crime rate has soared. Right now, it’s at 17%. Exactly what means, I don’t know. Are 17% of Marble Cliffs’ 1,075 residents criminals? Whatever the number mean, 17% of anything is 17% too much, so we’ll be plopping down a high tech police station as soon as possible.

December, 2020

We’re now a tiny town with 1,400 residents. With the new city status comes more new stuff than I can count, but some of the highlights are park areas, industry areas, football stadiums, a crapton of new policies, and the brand new fishing industry. I’m very much tempted to try the latter, but the only water we have access to is a river that we’re currently polluting with our citizens sewage.

So we moved the sewage pipes further downstream to make room for Hook, Line and Sinker Fishing Inc., which is Marble Cliffs very first specialized industry. To celebrate, we’ve also started planning a brand new park, and we might even set aside a little money for football stadium.

The future has never looked brighter!

The story continues in Just Another Day in Marble Cliffs.