Sizing Up Your Opponent:

Sizing Up Your Opponent:
A brief guide on guessing whether or not you will be able to win a fight in Facebook's Mafia Wars

One of the most popular questions I get is "how to win fights in mafia wars." Winning fights in Mafia Wars is easy - be stronger than your opponent! The problem is, you don't know if you're stronger than the guy who keeps robbing your buddy's casinos. This leaves you with a few questions:

1. How do I know if I'm stronger than my opponent?

2. If I'm not stronger than my opponent, how can I make my character stronger?
I'll start with the first question.

How do I know if I will win a fight?

The short answer is you don't know until you try. However, there are a few ways that you can size up your opponent before attacking him.

Mafia Size - Okay, this is an easy one. If your enemy's mafia is larger than yours, odds are he will win in a fight. If their mafia is smaller, odds are you will win. If you need mafia members, there are multiple recruitment groups and threads on facebook that exist for the purpose of finding new mafia members.

Win to Loss Ratio - Take a look at the picture below:

This player has won 22 fights and lost 92 fights. In other words, they've lost 92 fights out of 114 (~80%) total fights. Anyone with a losing % of more than 50% is going to be a pretty easy target. Anyone with a winning % of more than 80% is going to be a tough target. Anyone with a winning % of around 90% is going to be very tough. This is not 100% foolproof. Example: a player puts all his stat points in attack, and only collects attack items, while putting nothing in defense. However, this is usually not the case. Especially if you see someone with 90% win percentage - they are able to win both on attack and defense often, which means the player in question is quite strong.

In order to get a clearer idea on the issue, compare your losing % with your foe's percentage. If your mafias are roughly the same size and you have a higher win percentage then your opponent, you'll probably win the fight. If you have a lower win percentage, the odds are not in your favor!

Interpreting other stats
If the mafia size and win/loss % are inconclusive, other stats are available. Compare deaths to mobsters whacked - if a player has a lot more kills then deaths, odds are he's a pretty tough player. Same goes with times robbed to successful heists - if someone has never been robbed but has a lot of successful heists, be careful!

Compare your mafia size and win to loss ratio to your potential opponent. If you have a bigger mafia and better win/loss ratio, you're likely to win! If not, you should reconsider attacking. If you and your opponent are similar on both, look at the kill to death ratio and heists to times robbed ratio - if your opponent dies more often then you do, you have a good chance to win! Same goes for successful heists to times robbed ratio (if someone gets robbed a lot, they are an easy target for fights). With these tips, you should have a pretty good idea of whether or not you will be able to beat another player in a fight without ever attacking them! Tomorrow I will answer the second question - how to make your character stronger so that you can win more fights and beat tougher opponents!