Thanks for the thoughtfully-worded suggestion. We're going to keep this open to both gauge interest and see if someone wants to take the bounty on adding it to the implementation someday.

For the near-term, our primary focus is on implementing the official rules. We know faction drafting is a fan-favorite unofficial variant, but it's not as easy as copy-pasting code from another project. (It's actually easier to design it from scratch, believe it or not.) With limited time and resources, we sometimes need to be picky about what we can work on.

This has definitely been a popular suggestion, though you're the first one to submit it formally. I appreciate the desire for the auction, especially as that's the de facto standard for competitive Terra Mystica play. To further explain some of our considerations:

At this time, the auction variant is not publisher-approved. Terra Mystica introduced faction bidding with the Fire & Ice expansion; the Gaia Project rules (published well after Fire & Ice) do not suggest faction bidding. I can only speculate as to the reasoning there, but the publisher-endorsed balancing mechanism for Gaia Project is tile rotation, not faction bidding.

But a larger problem is that faction bidding in Gaia Project has several ill-defined behaviors relative to Terra Mystica:
- Presumably, you build the map and then bid on factions; after all, you know what the map looks like before bidding in TM.
- Does the last player still get to rotate the tiles? If so, does that happen before or after the auction?
- If it happens before the auction, how do you mitigate the starting player advantage?

You could make some informed guesses here, and certainly as a more competitive player, you'd be better qualified to do so than I would, but I would be uncomfortable proceeding with one player's interpretation of the unofficial variant, no matter how qualified that one player may be.

I suspect the community will align on a set of faction bidding rules for Gaia Project on BGA -- after all, Terra Mystica's BGA implementation is not exactly as stated in the Fire & Ice rules -- and that faction bidding will eventually be added. For this reason, I'm happy to leave this suggestion open: I expect it to eventually be integrated. But for the immediate future, we won't be adding it.

> One thing to add is that a map generation should be added
Do you mean the map generation that's already part of the setup right now? It's an experimental feature we've added that may or may not stick around. If you try it out, let us know what you think.

Without going into too much boring detail, the map generation looks over every color and tries to balance the fairness between them. It doesn't care if they're all advantaged or all disadvantaged, as long as they're equal.

It looks at every planet of every color and considers the following, with different scoring factors for each:
1) Distance to a gaia planet
2) Distance to a transdim planet
3) Distance to all other planets and how much terraforming would be required
4) Being on the edge of the map subtracts from the score somewhat

Additionally, the algorithm considers other constraints aside from score, like ensuring that a planet cluster contains no more than 4 planets.

Please don't play with optional features you dislike.

Those are some fun ideas. The game engine has no access to Elo rating, so it would have to be random.

If I were to implement something of my own choosing, it would probably be this:
1) The random map generator creates a new map. No rotation. (We're already in unofficial territory here, so why not speed up creation somewhat.)
2) The last (or first?) player without a faction picks a faction that he wants
3) Everyone bids a number of VP they're willing to pay to get this faction. Probably blind bids to make it faster.
4) The highest bidder gets the faction, with ties broken by the person proposing the faction. (i.e. If you choose a faction no one wants, you'll get it for your 0 VP bid.)
5) Go back to step 2, including only players without factions. Repeat until everyone has a faction.

For a four player game, this has no rotations and three blind bids, with some extra strategic options vs. bidding before knowing any of the factions involved.

Report short description
"Need auction for drafting initial factions as per Terra Mystica"
changed to
"Suggest faction drafting variant"

While this is something we have our eye on doing, it is not a high priority for a number of reasons.

1) The feature will take many hours to complete
2) The feature is entirely volunteer work and we have families and competing responsibilities (see #1)
3) Following discussions on BGA and other sites regarding this, it's clear that no matter which approach we take to a draft a very vocal subset of players will be unhappy. (For a mild example of this, just scroll up to my previous post right here.)

This is something I'm still working on in my free time, but I make no promises as to whether it will ever be deployed. The vocal negative reactions towards optional work I've done previously (random maps, anyone?) makes me reluctant to volunteer myself for further abuse (see #3), so this isn't a high priority.

On a positive note, Gaia Project is an excellent game that has been embraced by the community at large using the publisher-provided ruleset.

Happy Saturday morning. We've completed the implementation of new features that include banning, drafting, and auctions. We've also been in touch with the publisher to receive approval of these optional features.

Months of planning and volunteer hours have gone into making these a top-notch experience. Having said that, we also recognize that no single solution will please everyone. Fortunately, these optional experiences don't replace the core game experience. If you discover this particular implementation isn't for you, we would invite you to continue to enjoy the existing experience supported by the official ruleset.

Enjoy the new features! I look forward to seeing more varied factions in upcoming games!

Check the end of the "How to Play" section for a description.