I thought it would be logical, that the one with the highest priority on a territory would get it. But in this game with Dessa has the 3rd pick on a territory and gets it, but Frank has it as 2nd pick. This is eventually why he lost the game. Can someone explain me why this is the order of the picks?

http://WarLight.net/MultiPlayer.aspx?GameID=2678533

Warlight first randomly picks the player it starts distribution with and he gets his first pick. Here Frank was first to pick. To even out the odds, next 2 territories will go to the other player, so Dessa gets 2 of his picks. He gets his first, then Warlight tries to assign his 2nd pick, but it turns out it was assigned already to Frank, so it gives him his 3rd pick (which in practice was 2nd). If Dessa was chosen to be first, Frank would get his #1 and #2 picks.

it follows abbaab, just like a majority of the game.. note that in greater than two players, the pick order is reversed after every round of picks is gained

So, if I understand you correctly, this means that both pick 2 and 3 have the exact same priority?

No, that only happens in a 1vs1 game when you don't get your 1st pick.

Basically, the order of players is randomly determined and each one is awarded their highest-rated selection remaining.

Therefore in an FFA it could be possible for someone to be awarded a territory that was their 4th choice (their first three having already been taken) when it was someone else's 1st choice. It is just the luck of the draw basically.

In a teamgame, i once lost my first pick to a teammate who picked it as 2, but he himself lost his first pick. I assume if you don't get a pick, in this case dessa losing the 2, you immediately get priority for your next choice.

What i'm trying to say is, if there's a fixed order after randomly assigning a starter wouldn't my teammate not get my first pick? or is it different in teamgames...

Ok, let me explain it on a 3vs3 game example:

We have players a,b,c in team 1 and d,e,f in team 2.
The game first wants to assign first picks to players, so the game randomly chooses a player it starts the distribution with. Suppose it's a, so a gets his 1st pick. Now it randomly chooses 2 players from team 2, suppose d and e (in that order). d gets his pick assigned, if his 1st was the same as a's 1st, he gets his 2nd pick as his 1st. After that e gets his pick, if his 1st was assigned already, the game tries his second. If the game assigned already both his 1st and 2nd picks, he gets his 3rd pick as his 1st. Imagine that like "moving up" the picks in case other people took your earlier picks. After that players b and c are assigned their 1st pick (suppose in that order), and last was f. So after that phase every player has one pick assigned (let's call it real 1st pick), though it could have been f's 6th pick, it serves as 1st. So the game assigned 1st picks in order adebcf. Next it assigns real 2nd picks and it does that in the order fcbeda. After that 3rd real picks in order adebcf again etc.

Hope it helps :)

Maybe it's easier to use letters for one team and numbers for the other: a, b and c versus 1, 2 and 3. Note that order within a team is randomized, I'm only using a -> b -> c and 1 -> 2 -> 3 because it's most intuitive.

a 1 2 b c 3 3 c b 2 1 a a 1 2 b c 3 3 c b 2 1 a ...

For a five vs five it would be:

a 1 2 b c 3 4 d e 5 5 e d 4 3 c b 2 1 a ...

For uneven teams, I **think** it pretends all teams have the same size as the biggest team, skipping over players which don't actually exist:

a 1 2 b c 3 d e e d 3 c b 2 1 a ...

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As an aside, personally I think the following would be better:

a 1 2 b c 3 d e e 3 2 d c 1 b a ...

As it would be less of a handicap on the smaller team. However, since battles between uneven teams seem to be fairly rare (I'm talking on-purpose here, not situations where team members get booted) I doubt it's worth fixing.