Civ4 AI Survivor Season 9: Game Two Writeup


This summary for Game Two was written by TheOneAndOnlyAtesh. Many thanks for volunteering to put this report together!

In many ways, this game was the polar opposite of its predecessor. For one, it was far more open-ended, as while Game 1 looked predestined to see a larger high peaceweight faction beat up on the two poor lowly bad guys, this setup had a more even personality spread, with two beacons of good, two lawful neutrals, and three ruffians. Moreover, while last week consisted mostly of traditionally strong leaders, this one was quite a bit wonkier, particularly regarding its resident Pool 1 leader: Alex?!? As it turns out, having two crushing Domination victories and a strong second place finish over the past five seasons will garner a 1 seed in our scoring system. Moreover, this looked like a good setup for Alex to justify his newfound status, as he occupied a strong central position in the Northern hemisphere with a litany of juicy targets.

Directly to his south was the Pool 2 leader, the infamous Willem von Orange. At this point, everyone and their mothers were familiar with the "Willem Gambit" that had cost Willem at least one AI Survivor trophy, and this was a dangerous setup for Willem to research Combustion before Rifling in. With that said, this was a promising setup for a Dutch renaissance, as despite his central positioning he had plenty of high quality expansion room to take advantage of his top tier Fin/Cre tech pairing.

Speaking of which, another notable aspect about this field was the presence of four Financial leaders! Indeed, the entire Eastern slice of the map consisted of the three non-Willem Financials. In the southeast corner was Victoria, who was fresh off of a respectable Season 8. Unfortunately, due to her sketchy local diplomatic situation and her land which consisted of a lot of useless flat desert, it looked like she was going to have an uphill battle to climb. To her North was fan favorite Hannibal, who had a history of Hatshepsut-level bad luck when it came to rolling low production, jungly starting positions. While this was a decent diplomatic field for him, there was a nearby sugary patch of jungle that gave the AI Survivor community significant deja vu. In addition, Hannibal could ill afford a slow start due to the menace to his north, the scraggly stalwart Ragnar, who had a copper resource in his capital and would happily bash himself against even a fellow warmonger ally.

While the Financial East looked like a powderkeg, the West seemed to be a good bit calmer, with the oddball Joao and the peaceful Lincoln occupying the southwest and northwest spots, respectively. The two are most well known in the AI Survivor community for their leaderhead animations, which should say a lot about their overall reputations, and while they have both had a smattering of playoff appearances over the years there has not been too much of note to say about their AI Survivor careers. While Lincoln, due to his proximity to Alex, seemed doomed here, Joao actually had a nice corner position tucked behind his natural ally Willem, and at worst could backdoor second place behind a warmonger's snowball. Interestingly, this meant that all seven leaders in this field started with Fishing - yet, none of them had coastal starts. The Financial Fisherman's Fiesta was for sure looking like it was going to be spicy.

The majority of the picking contest was on Team Financial, with Willem and Hannibal respectively garnering around 42% and 23% of the winner votes. Alexander also had sizable support to win. Joao and Hannibal equally split more than half of the Runner Up picks, while the vast majority of the community believed that either Lincoln or Ragnar were in for a rough ride, the former due to his iffy diplomatic setup and the latter due to his wanton aggression and relatively commerce-poor land. Fantasy wise, this was a huge game for famed AI Survivor bookkeeper LinkMarioSamus, who had over 100 points invested in this game, including 90 points on Willem and Hannibal. Kuro, with a moderate bid on Alex, and Vincarius with a small 21 gold investment in Alex were also making their fantasy debuts. Meanwhile, Lobster667 and Maniamuse were hoping that their cheap bids in this game could help them recover from their disappointing results last week.

From my personal standpoint, this game was going to depend on the following factors:

1) With plenty of high quality expansion room, who was going to come out the strongest after the expansion phase?
2) How were the two crazy warmongers going to impact this game, and could they get off an effective early conquest to keep up with their competition?
3) Would Willem be able to skirt aggression, would he tech Rifling in time, and if not, who would benefit the most from his partition?
4) With zero Mysticism-starting leaders, the religious landscape was going to be extremely unpredictable. Who would found the religions, and, considering the peaceweight spreads, could religious alliances be key to coming out of this volatile map?

Five turns in, and the game was already shaken up. Tragically for Hannibal stans, the Carthaginians had found themselves mired in yet another jungle cataclysm! Hope those diabetic bananas were worth it, because Hannibal had just consigned himself to limping out a 45 turn settler! The sad part was, he could have transferred the malaria-ridden citizens of Utica to either a farmed rice tile or a grassland mine, but alas, the AI are not programmed to micromanage their tiles like that! Thus, Hannibal was destined to not have his third city until around Turn 50. Five turns in, and this had become a six player game unless Hannibal was able to get some miracle like he did in Season 7.

Interestingly enough, no leader pursued a religion out of the gate, instead opting for their typical development or Archery techs (outside of Willem strangely opening Hunting despite having zero capital Hunting resources). Soon afterwards, however, Lincoln, RAGNAR, and ALEX simultaneously raced to found the Meditation religion! Alex eventually fell behind, but Ragnar and Lincoln were neck-and-neck for being the first to Meditation. Which apocalyptic mediation of the future would win: that of the televangelists or that of the Ragnarok adherents?

While Ragnar's primary source of commerce was a single oasis, Lincoln had multiple river tiles to work, and thus, Christianity in this world saw its humble beginnings in the pastures of New York City. Congrats, Lincoln, you just got your first AI Survivor win since the inaugural season. This was not a good outcome for the Vikings, who could ill afford wasting turns on religion with his land. At least he and Alex did not have their typical "avoid culture for 100 turns" defect that had gimped their games in the past, but it remained to be seen whether such forays were worth it. Meanwhile, Lincoln was doing his best religious leader impression, building an early Stonehenge in his capital to net him an early Philosophical-boosted Great Prophet for his Christian shrine. He had aced the early portions of the game, and for the time being Sullla's 2nd place prediction for Honest Abe was looking brilliant.

Elsewhere in the south, Victoria made a bold move to take advantage of her sickly Northern neighbor, sending her Nottingham settlers off on a trek across the vast desert to jam her 3rd city straight up Hannibal's gut. Things went from bad to worse for Hannibal when Ragnar also forward settled him. The poor guy just has just had some rotten luck over his AI Survivor career. Otherwise, Willem and Joao were having quietly solid openings, which was precisely what they needed while their competition got distracted by barbarians, cultural tensions and religious rat races. Since most of these leaders were neglecting the central spots in favor of safer backline settlements, three barb fortresses had sprouted up in the middle of the map - indeed, the barbs were outexpanding some of these leaders, particularly poor Hannibal! Whichever leader could hook up metals first, not be tempted to throw them away on a wasteful early conflict, and achieve a successful barbarian jungle campaign was going to be well-positioned for a strong game.

Two barbarian cities sprouted up near Alex's neighborhood, one of them being Visigoth which was only a few tiles from his capital. While at first this appeared to be a stroke of bad luck for the Greek menace, Alex compensated by teching Polytheism and hitting the 20% chance to found Taoism in his third city of Corinth. This could not have been a better Holy City location, as Corinth almost immediately began to exert cultural influence on the savages of Visigoth, who quickly embraced the wonders of Greek Taoism and flipped to Alex. Furthermore, the borders of Holy City Corinth and Stonehenge-boosted Washington were inching towards each other, and it was likely a matter of if, not when, the two blue civs would come to blows.

Following the first 50 turns, it was a wide open game save for the jungle-fever addled Hannibal, who had JUST FINISHED BUILDING HIS 3RD CITY SETTLER. Ragnar and Vicky had grabbed all his good potential 3rd city sites and Hannibal's game was effectively over. Conversely, the other six leaders each had 4-5 cities with more on the way. Notably, the tech pace was starting to drag, with Joao and Vicky in particular having nearly crashed their economies with their aggressive settling.

Luckily, there was plenty of time to fix their economies, especially since the two crazies had inexplicably ignored most early military techs in favor of religious forays; Alex still lacked MINING at Turn 50. Many had thought that Alex would connect Copper really early and ruin Lincoln's day, but it was far too late now as Lincoln's Stonehenge would soon secure Washington DC's cultural control over his own source of Copper. While Alex was otherwise having a strong start, the best move for him would be to temper his bloodlust for the time being and build up for what should be an easy American conquest, especially since Lincoln was completely blowing his strong start in typical "little Lincoln" fashion, completely halting expansion at merely four cities in favor of building televangelist monasteries and wonders. WRONG GAME ABE! THIS IS NOT CIV5 FOUR CITY TRADITION! In just 25 turns, HANNIBAL had gone from two to five cities and now had a larger empire than the Americans. Unacceptable.

By Turn 75, the three Southern leaders had all established themselves as major players. Joao and Vicky had both executed nearly perfect openings, early economic struggles notwithstanding, as they had fully utilized their traits (while taking advantage of their weak or passive Northern neighbors) to quietly grow and develop menacing empires. Willem, meanwhile, had become the first leader to get metals and had settled a strong core. The one concern for him was that his expansion pace was not as fast as it could have been, with both Joao and Vicky fitting cities in areas that probably should have been Dutch by now. Interestingly, Willem ended up founding the Monotheism religion of Judaism, but it was too late to matter much; Lincoln's televangelism had spread like wildfire, and Willem made no effort to spread his own religion, opting to form a Christian brotherhood with his natural ally Joao. Willem's minority religion was not totally irrelevant, as it had randomly spread to Ragnar (and later Hannibal), but in the grand scheme of things diplomatic lines were going to be drawn by peaceweight, not religion. In general, the clock was ticking for the Northern warmongers to do something before the global South left them in the dust.

Alex heeded the call, launching the game's first war on Lincoln as everyone was expecting. This was not going to be an easy conflict, however. Lincoln had at last woken up from his wonder-induced slumber, founding the fortress city of Atlanta right in Corinth's ballpark, and was unusually in war plotting mode himself when the Greeks launched their invasion, meaning that he had an equally strong army despite his small size and Atlanta was ready for whatever the Greeks were able to muster. He even added a sixth city to his empire by sniping the barbarian city of Uzbek with a stray wandering warrior! Alex's war was about as poorly timed as it could have been for the Greek conqueror. His window to attack Lincoln pre-Construction was long past, and he was just throwing away units for no reason. Ragnar followed that up by marching his armies to attack... Vicky?!? Like Alex, Ragnar was also sputtering out and gambling away what few prospects he had on a pointless conflict, and the Viking-English war would quickly conclude without anything eventful taking place. Considering Hannibal's implosion and the fact the two warmongers were nowhere close to Construction tech, one thing was clear: this game was not going to be a warmonger success story, especially after Willem, one turn from unlocking Catapults, entered the Greco-American conflict on Lincoln's side. The biggest winner of the first round of fighting was Joao, who had a double-digit city count (including the final central barb city) and was now the undisputed frontrunner in this game.

Unfortunately for the Dutch, what should have been a relatively simple 2v1 conflict turned into a 1v1 when Alex shrewdly signed peace with the Americans, allowing him to concentrate fully on one theatre of war. With Joao running away and Vicky (who also had over 10+ cities now) fast catching up, Willem's decision to pause expansion to plot war was being exposed as a major strategic error. His fighting was also leaving much to be desired, as rather than forming a dedicated stack, he was just sending trickles of soldiers to meet their doom. This left Middleberg poorly defended, causing it to get unwittingly captured and recaptured multiple times. While Willem eventually warded off the Greek invaders and maintained control over Middleberg, there was absolutely no reason for him to be in such a situation to begin with.

Asking Ragnar to stay at peace is like putting a toddler to sleep; it is just impossible. Quickly after withdrawing from England, Ragnar marched his army to attack the other English-speaking folk far off to the west in America. Keep doing what makes you happy, I guess. Unsurprisingly, Lincoln was in no danger, and indeed he was back in playoff contention, as he had finally gotten to eight cities and had a robust shrine and Great Lighthouse economy carrying his game. He was also racking up most of the later religions, meaning a Lincoln Cultural victory was not the most outlandish possibility ever.

Vicky also used her brief period of peace to plan her next conflict, but unlike Ragnar, her next move was much more sound: she sent her forces to bring Hannibal out of his misery. While she still lacked Construction, she was so strong that within one turn she had already brute forced her way through Kerkouane without seige, and she was going to swallow the Carthaginians sooner rather than later. Concurrently, Joao finally made his power play, piling onto the flailing and distracted Greeks, and the fates of two leaders were sealed. Joao made fast gains in capturing territory from the exhausted Greeks, claiming the bulk of the spoils and leaving only minor tidbits for Willem. The race for First To Die was on, and although Vicky had a massive head start in conquering Hannibal, the combination of some iffy stack management from the English and two leaders working together against Alex meant that, for the second time in two games, a Pool 1 leader had become First To Die.

If Alex was trying to prove that he was worthy of his top seed, he did a pretty shoddy job. Alex's biggest failing this game was one of identity - instead of playing the early game like the warmonger he is, he spent much of his early turns on trying to found religions as if he were Asoka, which merely proved to be precious extra time for Lincoln to be prepared. No warmonger should be embarking on a nearly ten-turn Mining research at Turn 50, and by the time Alex came calling it was too late, and he wound up spending the remainder of his brief season in fruitless warring until a much larger and more advanced Joao came crashing in to end his season early. In order to succeed in the future, Alex will need to return to his true warmongering ways.

Soon afterwards, Vicky brought an end to Hannibal's miserable existence. Carthago delenda est, not out of hatred, but out of mercy. For the fourth season in a row, the poor guy had rolled snake eyes regarding his land, and with his local diplomacy, having only two cities on Turn 50 all but sealed his fate. This game should not impact his reputation too much, as there is widespread acknowledgement that he has been one of the unluckiest leaders in AI Survivor.

There was bad news for Willem supporters: he had become relegated to third cog status. While Willem had done most of the fighting, Joao had gotten by far the most territory, and all Willem got for his efforts were a couple of awkwardly placed, culturally crushed protectorates. His economy was shockingly mediocre, perhaps downright bad for a Financial leader, and at this point only Joao and Vicky seemed likely to win this game. It was quite similar to last week, with a Financial English leader's economy racing against a leader's foodhammer dominance. A Lincoln Culture victory potential was quashed when Joao built the Sistine Chapel. He had also lost his prized former barbarian outpost of Uzbek to the Vikings, leaving him with just his seven city northwest corner hideout. He was now for all intents and purposes a Portuguese vassal and totally irrelevant to the remainder of the game.

For a brief moment, it seemed the remaining field would take out Ragnar and then hold hands till the end of the game. Then, in a shocker, WILLEM BLINDSIDED HIS FORMER WAR ALLY JOAO. This looked like an utterly suicidal war declaration against a larger and more technologically advanced foe, except, Joao was clearly unprepared for such a backstab, and Willem somehow was rampaging his way through Greek Portugal. We were watching an episode of Joao Joao's Bizarre Adventure: The Curious Case Of The AWOL Army (shoutout danjuno!), with the Portuguese Army in complete disarray. Was Willem about to somehow conquer enough of Portugal to vault himself back into this game?

SURPRISE! Somehow, the Portuguese army was on the COMPLETE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE MAINLAND, and while Willem was distracted in former Greek lands, AMSTERDAM HAD FALLEN. As it turned out, Joao's army was marching to or from the East Antarctic to wipe out some random barb city, and when Willem launched his backstab, the Portuguese forces were teleported to England, meaning they had to crash their way through Willem's heartland to get back home. One slight problem with this: Joao had fallen into the "One Catapult of Doom" trap, which left his army stuck throwing rocks at the Utrecht Castle for a long time. Naturally, losing his capital instantly silenced any talk of a Willem comeback. No matter what though, Willem needed to take as much as he could and then peace out ASAP, as Joao was beelining Rifling while Willem did not even have Gunpowder yet. This was no Willem Gambit; the Dutch were just lagging behind in tech. The good news was, Willem did precisely that (alongside recapturing Amsterdam, at the cost of losing Utrecht) right after Joao obtained Rifling, except he handed back one of his conquests in the peace deal which greatly muted the effectiveness of the conquests he was able to keep. This slammed the door shut on his miniscule winning chances, as the three culturally crushed former Greek cities he gained was not worth having two core cities lost or crippled.

In the East, Vicky went back on the warpath, smartly choosing to pick off the rump Viking state. While Ragnar was no longer at war with America, Vicky's army was twice as large and it was a matter of when, not if, the English would control the entire Eastern slice of the map. With that said, "when" was a bigger question than it should have been. Willem Syndrome proved contagious here: VICKY WAS REFUSING TO UTILIZE HER OWN UNIQUE UNIT. She was going Combustion, Assembly Line, and FASCISM instead of Rifling! She did not even have Military Tradition for cuirassiers! This meant that, despite being far, far ahead in tech, she was actually fighting with worse units than Ragnar, who had beelined grenadiers and was thus putting up a tough defensive effort. With Joao doing a poor defensive job and Vicky having an equally poor offensive effort, it felt like no one wanted to win this game! Nevertheless, her teching was so fast that she was going to research Rifling sooner rather than later, and once she had infantry, cavalry and cannons on the scene (yup, not a single piece of professional red military attire was worn in this game) she quickly demolished what was left of Scandinavia. Ragnar's failures were similar to Alex's. He was a warmonger blessed with a fast start and a weak neighbor, but instead of capitalizing on that he went for a failed religious bid. Those 15 wasted turns of research were disastrous, and like Alex it was too late by the time he had connected metals. At least Alex gained a significant amount of territory alongside a shrine for his troubles. Ragnar was left with nothing, and thus spent the remainder of the game fighting meaningless cross-map wars until he was yeeted out of the competition by a runaway Vicky.

As the English were ruthlessly running over the Vikings, Willem rebuilt his army with rifles (!!!) and came back for Round 2 against Joao. Unfortunately, Joao was extremely close to getting infantry and cannons of his own, and Willem's first strike advantage almost instantly evaporated. Soon enough, Willem's army was wiped out and Joao had cut the Netherlands into two pieces. Vicky was not going to let Joao gain all that territory for free, hitting Willem from the East soon after taking out Ragnar. Willem had infantry, but his adversaries now had tanks and an air force, partitioning what remained of the orange borders between them (with Joao netting the killing blow). So far, seeded leaders have been 0 for 4 this season in mere survival. Willem's major mistake was the decision to go to war against Alex. While he was not a bad choice of a target, what Willem really needed to do was focus on expansion before his two Imperialistic neighbors took everything. Instead, he just allowed Joao to peacefully build up for 50 more turns, pile on, and take most of Greece for himself. Even as a Financial leader, he was just too small to compete, and no matter how hard he tried - and try he did - Joao and Vicky were probably going to sandwich him at some point. Like many other leaders have in the past, Willem bungled a strong starting position by plotting and declaring war too early.

Thus, there were three. Lincoln, obviously, was too small to compete. Even a backdoor Culture victory was out of the question as he only had two real legendary cities, and with just one cultural trait four Holy Cities was not enough to consider switching on the slider. He could not even be the deciding UN vote, as both Joao and Vicky were large enough to block such a vote. Despite the world finally being at peace - Vicky could attack anyone at Pleased, but she was all-in on the space race - the excitement was nowhere close to over, as Joao and Vicky were now neck and neck in a captivating space race. So far, Joao had the upper hand due to his land quality. Similar to the previous game, Vicky was struggling a bit with health issues, although it was not as bad as Lizzy's and she was not going to throw with an ill-advised Culture attempt. She was an equal in size Financial leader and could easily catch up in this race - indeed, she had already caught up in foodhammers, and Joao needed to hope his tech lead could hold.

By Turn 300, Joao was one spaceship tech ahead, and this was despite having researched the useless (for the Space race) Advanced Flight. His lead was further cemented with two events: his winning the Fusion Great Engineer race, and Vicky making an Advanced Flight detour. Joao had a 3200 beaker per turn rate compared to Vicky's 2700, and it seemed his victory was secured. Except, VICKY SUDDENLY POPPED A GOLDEN AGE! This could not have been better timed, as Vicky immediately rocketed ahead to an obscene 3900 beakers. With Vicky smartly avoiding the Stealth poison pill, this allowed her to close the gap. Just like that, BOTH leaders had finished all the spaceship techs.

Not only had Vicky completely caught up, but she had also taken a much better end game tech path. While her final Spaceship tech was Genetics, Joao's last tech was COMPOSITES, which was the SS Casings tech. While a Spaceship could be launched with fewer than five casings, each missing casing would add a 20% chance for the Spaceship to BLOW UP DURING ITS JOURNEY. While saving Composites for last completely prevented Joao from taking the Stealth bait, it had messed up his chances of winning the Space Race. Vicky already had five Casings built and was just two turns away from completing her Spaceship, and had now, for the first time in this game, had become the victory frontrunner with a timely Golden Age and perfect tech pathing!

HOWEVER, THE GAME WAS NOT OVER. Vicky was the first to launch her Spaceship, but in her rush she had made a critical error: SHE ONLY LAUNCHED WITH FOUR THRUSTERS, meaning her Spaceship would take 12 turns, not 10! Joao, seeing his chance, LAUNCHED HIS OWN SPACESHIP WITH JUST TWO CASINGS. This, of course, was playing with fire, as the Spaceship had a 60% chance at blowing up. Nevertheless, assuming all goes right, the Spaceships were scheduled to arrive at Alpha Centauri ON THE SAME TURN. This was the closest Space race we had the joy of witnessing in a long time. Would Vicky cement her impressive comeback, or would Joao Joao's Bizarre Adventure end happily with his Spaceship succeeding despite being held together by duct tape?

OH NO, JOAO JOAO! THE SPACESHIP WENT KABOOM, AND VICKY WINS THE SPACE RACE!!!

Sullla: According to testing done at CivFanatics, when two AI leaders tie on the same spaceship arrival date, it's a purely random coinflip as far as who claims the victory. Therefore Joao only had 20% odds to win here, 40% odds for his spaceship to arrive safely and then a 50/50 coinflip with Victoria as far as who would take home the win. Thus while this was indeed the expected outcome, the fact that Joao had any chance at all was remarkable given his trailing status in the space race.

While both leaders performed well, Vicky was particularly deserving of her victory. She had a monstrous expansion phase, took full advantage of her neighbors, and then chose extremely smart wars against weak targets to secure her position and garner enough territory to catch up to Joao. While she did exhibit a rather bad case of Willem Syndrome, she had aced the rest of her game so much that it barely mattered. It cannot be overstated how impressive Vicky's win really was. Her land and local diplomatic positioning looked atrocious, and indeed it was so bad that despite being Financial, Vicky's early economy had dipped below Observer civ levels. Despite that, she pushed through and pulled off a major upset. The main takeaway from this is that while we could analyze and overanalyze almost any map to death and perfectly ascertain each leader's land quality, ultimately any outside factors can be overcome by sheer competence. Vicky won by playing the best game of Civilization IV from one of the worst starting positions, and with three victories in the past four seasons she has shown how high her potential is with her trait pairing and civilization.

Unlike Vicky, it was pretty apparent that Joao was blessed with a strong starting position that his rapid expansionist traits are uniquely suited to take advantage of. All he needed to do was to expand and build up for a well-timed conflict, and that was precisely what he did. The problem was, Joao did a quite poor job at translating his massive advantage into an actual win, first failing to respond properly to Willem's surprise backstab, later failing to punish Willem enough, allowing Financial Vicky to gain crucial extra territory, and then making sketchy research choices at the end to blow his lead. Although this was no backdoor finish - Joao was in the driver's seat for a win for at least 90% of this game and earned his two kills - he was going to need to do better in the Playoffs if he was going to qualify for his first Championship.

Oh, Little Lincoln. You had such a good start, and then you went into wonder-building mode with just four cities and blew it. It is such a shame, as Lincoln is a legitimately strong techer. It was impressive how close he was to a Spaceship of his own despite having only seven cities and being at war for most of the game. He just is so bad at expanding that he rarely gets large enough to scale. For now, he will join Hatshepsut in the Wildcard game, which at the very least should be good for the much maligned Egyptian pharaoh.

This was another decent game for the picking contest, as despite the upset winner enough people had read Joao's 2nd place strength that the picking contest average was 8.5 points, similar to last week. There was a five-way tie for first place this week; as of now, Kuro (a fantasy contestant!) held a slight lead on the season-wide picking contest. Speaking of which, Kuro's 34 gold bid on Alex, while disappointing, was not a complete waste as he still netted two First To Die points from it. With that said, the game results were absolutely catastrophic for LinkMarioSamus' fantasy chances, his 102 combined gold bid imploding in a larger ball of flames than Joao Joao's Bizarre Spaceship Adventure had. Conversely, Lobster667 can put her Mansa disappointment in the rearview mirror, as her cheap 16 gold bid on Victoria had netted her an amazing seven points. She was very much back in fantasy contention. This was also an excellent result for Vincarius, whose 21 bid on Joao was a steal.

So far, this has been a reprise of last season's high peaceweight success story. Next week's game in theory should change that, as Pacal and three of his low peaceweight buddies take on the less-than-impressive high peaceweight duo of Pericles and Sitting Bull. We will see - was Vincarius' 80 gold gamble on Pacal worthwhile? Will the low peaceweights finally get it together after a collectively long cold stretch? Or will Pericles and Sitting Bull turtle up and work together against their adversaries? Tune in for Game 3 to find out!