Place workers (“agents”) around the map to influence the actions of five nations, an additional raiding nation and some special-action places. Each nation can control Cities - where each City gains that nation one point. Each player has a secret ranking of how they want the nations to rank at the end of four turns, and the player who manages to make the end state match their rankings best wins.
This includes the Expansion of Influence expansion. It is pretty short for a dudes-on-a-map game, since the number of actions taken in the entire game is pre-set.