jeez, I played a game with 15 auctions the other day. original version NEVER had that many.
I pray the programmers spend some time playing 4 player original MULE. That is the only way they will get a feel for the timings of the game. It makes you really appreciate how good of a programmer he/she was. Only 48k to work with and the game still has not been duplicated with gigs of ram and i7 quad cpus.
The auctions are too often and the speed of the money increase is way too fast.
As for timings on plot selection they probably need to put in a lag timer so the person in last place gets the plit he wants. Something like a .5 sec delay on people ahead of you. The guy in first place should not be able to get the plot ahead of the guy in last place if they press their buttons at the same time. This is probably due to internet lag.