I played in my first competitive game over the weekend, and because I was in first place on turn 1, I got shafted hard and spent most of the rest of the game in 4th place.  However, any time a plot was contested, I never got it.  I lost two to AI and one to the other human player who was in first.

So it does not appear to be fully functioning yet that the lowest place person who buzzes in gets the plot, unless somehow my buzz-ins weren't registered at all, though that seems unlikely, since my buzz-ins for non-contested plots worked fine.

While that, and the Crystite (which I don't think the AI ever went into in the original either) are great examples of AI stupidity, I'm fairly impressed by what appears to be AI improvements in the auctions.  In particular the land auctions, but other resources as well.  Before I could utterly destroy the AI with very simple techniques.  They're still no match because of other inherent stupidities, but they're better.