In Augustus, you vie with your fellow players to complete "objective" cards for special powers and ultimately for victory points. Each card has 2-6 symbols which you must populate with legionnaire meeples in order to complete the card. These symbols are drawn one at a time from a bag, with all players gaining the benefit equally, but interestingly, the bag contains more of some symbols than others.
So the pivotal skill you'll deploy is in making your choice of which three objectives you'll start the game with (you're dealt six) — balancing potential difficulty of completion against value of the reward — and then which of five available objectives you'll add to your plate each time you complete one of your three. The game ends when someone completes seven objectives.