Players try to bring the city-states of ancient Sumeria to the fore. Each turn, players boost the importance of one of the city-states by flooding it with their traders, boosting its power. Each time a city-state gains power one or more will lose power. The aim is to gain control of the pre-eminent city-states during the scoring rounds at the end of each dynasty. Players have to time their movements, as a city-state can quickly lose favor too.

Sumeria features the following components:

• A playing board featuring eight city-states
• 2 large pawns - a start player marker and a turn marker
• 8 city tiles
• 56 trader tokens - fourteen each in four colours
• 36 score tokens - nine each of four different types
• a cloth bag