You still situate your capital city, and click it to designate the production of military units or workers that can spruce up your immediate surroundings. But Beyond Earth also calcifies much of Civilization V's vocabulary and play arc. Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth shifts the series' brand of turn-based discovery and conquest off-planet, and the sci-fi setting puts a slick, chrome sheen on my old neurosis. It's wonderful, soul-sucking entertainment. Then, in a sudden fit of self-loathing, I'll wipe the board clean.

Eventually I'll nestle a few defensible cities into the mountainside, churn through tech advancements until I can fuss over cute little janissaries or hussar units like they're collectible figurines. I get into these obsessive restarting loops, curious just to see what new permutation the game's map-making algorithms spit out. I'm an absentee world leader: present for my peoples' first fumbling steps towards agriculture, gone again somewhere between the invention of the compass and the internal combustion engine. But I can tell you that for all those hours, I've only actually seen a single session with the history-based strategy game through to completion. It's below the 'hours played' tab for my copy of Civilization V and I.well, I'm not sure I want to dwell on that figure.

Civilization beyond earth review ign