Board Game Arena

The idea for a fast auction has been suggested here: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=65338

This system uses the same concept implemented on the Gaia steam app and would allow for a much faster auction experience while sacrificing little to none of the strategic advantages of the current auction system. Read it over and thumb the suggestion so we can hopefully get this implemented soon.

Just to note, this is the system that the BGA implementation of Gaia Project uses, too. There are details on the Gaia Project "How To Play" section of BGA.

If you enjoy both Terra Mystica and Gaia Project, you can try the faster bidding system here as well.

This looks like a very interesting idea to save some time and I think it could be a nice alternative. But which auction type you use has a huge impact on the outcome of the game!
If everyone would know from the start, what they are willing to bid, the manual auction wouldnt take that much more time. It is however very hard to make an adequate assumption of the possible starts, mid and late game strategies of four different factions considering pass tiles, round and cult bonuses, the rivalry between the factions and so on... Having a manual auctions offers you much more time to think about your evaluations and you also get an idea of what the other players think. This means that players which are very good at the assessment part would heavily benefit of the new auction system because no one gets to see their opinion anymore.

I am not saying that one of the auction types is better, but they are more different in my opinion then they first appeal to be.