In the game, three or four players compete to be the most influential developer of Medina, a desert city near the Atlas Mountains in 1822.
The game was nominated for the 2001 Deutscher Spiele Preis and the 2003 Jeu de l'année, but won neither prize.
Each edge is lined by rectangles where the wall of the city is to be built and each corner is labelled with one of the numbers one through four.
Only the dome pieces correspond to the proprietary color of the player.
A player scores one point for each inhabitant bordering a building they have claimed.