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TaxIt/ContractAuction

The current method of auctioning contracts is to go through them, good by good, in the order the cities were placed, with the initial opening price set by the city, and each player having a chance to agree to that or, if a previous player agreed, undercut them. Minimum price = 0. (Though since the cost of paying tolls falls upon the player, the player might end up with a negative income from the deal.)

This is currently (as of /Playtest02) too slow.

Here's a suggestion:

For each city board, at the end of the three lines, indicate one of three statuses:

: 1. Closed auction
: 2. Open auction
: 3. No auction

You could do this by having a two sided disk, or by having one colour of marker, and two or three spots, which the marker is moved onto.

STEP ONE:
For each city a player controls, the player adjusts the indicators for that city.

: If there is no auction for a good (eg if the city already has a level 3 materials contract, but only level 2 in food, then there's no auction on materials this year), then indicate that
: If the player controlling the city can supply the goods for the contract from their own supplies, and is willing to commit to doing so at this stage, then indicate a closed contract
: Otherwise set the indicator for that good to open auction

STEP TWO:
In player order (or perhaps in reverse player order?) each player has the option of paying money to force closed auctions in other player's cities to become open auctions (pay 5 gold per one you force)

STEP THREE:
Players then fulfil their closed auctions. This can be done simultaneously. (might work better with the cities cards each player controls being in front of that player, rather than being held centrally)

STEP FOUR:
Do the open auctions. If you have cities in front of each player, you could do all of one player's cities, then all of the next player's cities. Each player could choose in what order to offer the contracts in front of them. This would allow questions of the form "Is anyone interested in bidding on supplying food to any of my cities?", that could eliminate multiple contracts in a single go.

STEP FIVE:
Capital city auction.

(Note: one option for player order would be that the player with the most influence in the capital gets to place their new cities first)