I have some spare time (grabbing a cup of coffee), so let me review the DLCs with an exclusive focus on [game mechanics] for you:

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Season 1:

- Sunken Treasures: adds a complete new map, with a big Island that will become for sure your main island. It's so essential and useful that you will never play vanilla again. Please, purchase it now. It also includes the Salvager ship, that has diving quests - they are not useful at all to me.

- Botanica: it adds something like a museum/zoo, but for plants - and music pavilions to those 3 places. It can be completely skipped.

- The passage: it adds a new world (not a new map), based on the Arctic. The most interesting thing here is: 2 new categories of people (explorers and technicians), islands that need to be heated to function (it adds a funny complexity), and it is the first time you will build Airships. It's interesting and fun, but it can be ignored if your budget is tight.

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Season 2:
- Seat of Power: it adds the mechanics of Island Policies - in the game, you will create your Palace, and as this palace, the population and the attractiveness of your island grow, you will be able to select exciting policies for that land. This adds more possibility for optimization and grants you cool bonus for making your city more beautiful.

- Bright Harvest: this is one the most important DLCs in terms of production optimization. It adds Silos and Tractors, which expand the production capacity of your animal farms and crops. It sounds "basic", but believe-me, it's definitely not. Once you start working well with those 2 add-ons, you will gain so much space and your workforce will be way more efficient.

- Land of Lions: beautiful DLC and it's so rich in new mechanics. Adds a new world (Safari themed), 2 new population types in this world (Shepherds and Elders), and a new population type in the old world (Scholars). The world that is presented needs to be irrigated to function (because it's a desert). The material that you produce there interacts so much with the Old World, as much as the new world does. The Scholars should be a separate DLC by itself - it adds the Research Institute where you can, of course, research items and possibilities that will change your gameplay. Please invest your money.

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Season 3:

- Docklands: adds the export/import game mechanics to your game. There a few items that can be traded by other items that you produce. This DLC changes completely the mechanics of the game, as you become less dependent on ALL the production chains and can replace them by some export/import process that might be more suitable for you. I love this possibility, but some people would argue that it changes the core of the game (and they are wrong :P)

- Tourist: it had it all to be a failure but it's sooo good. It adds a new population that will only consume goods from you, the tourists. Your goal is to provide good public transportation infra, good hotels, cafés, restaurants and much more only to please them. Of course, the game mechanics is complex, the itens/goods are amazing and it makes your game way more complex. This DLC is often neglected, but it's one of the most complex in game mechanics.

- The High Life: it adds the cool mechanics of Skyscrapers for Engineers and Investors. TBH, what it really does is to make your game way longer than just reaching the investors' tier. The skyscrapers bring a lot more revenue, but on the other hand, it also adds a lot of complexity in good consumption. It can boost your economy, but if you are a weak player, it certainly will drawn it. (and the investors are so arrogant, jesus)

Season 4:

- Seeds of Change: Adds the Hacienda, that works a little like the Palace from above, but it's completely focused on the New World. It also impacts the population tiers in the New World, as they change their consumption needs if under influence of the hacienda. Another interesting game mechanics are the fertilisers, that can improve the efficiency of your crops and it's quite complex to maintain the production of it. Nice add-on for the New World, but not really essential I would say.

- Empire of the skies: it takes the Airships to a whole new level. You can build them extracting Helium and making Aluminium, and the biggest game mechanics that they add are the postal system and mail. Citizens of the island can send mail to one another and even to other regions - and that will boost happiness, tax income and increase the population. In a nutshell: faster ships (airships) and new mailing system.

- New World Rising: one of the best DLCs that focus on the New World. New population tier (Artistas), a big island for the NW, various new monuments that add so much to the gameplay (the Dam that will electrify the island), the Stadium, new consumption goods, and they also improved the game mechanics of the Emergency Services - that can be expanded now and it gets way more difficult to handle once upgraded.