Maharaja is a strategic area control game. Don the robes of the priests of four major Indian deities and journey across the kingdom building altars and statues dedicated to them. Secretly plan your strategy and try to defeat your opponents using characters and their skills. Each round the Maharaja, the great king of India, will visit a new city and players will be rewarded according to the value of their gods in that city.

At the start of each round, players secretly plan their actions on their checker, in a phase that must be played simultaneously. At the end of the seventh round, or when a player builds the seventh statue, the game ends. The player with the most prestige wins the game. Maharaja is a complex game.