Why are people attacking me?! What can I do about it?

The nature of Mafia Wars is... well... war. It expected that you will attack other players, and they will attack you. If you feel like you're being kicked around constantly by everyone, realize that everyone else is getting kicked around too! Then take some precautions by banking your money, leveling up as fast as you can, and especially consider growing your mafia. Someone with a small mafia poses no challenge and will be the target of just about everyone.

No matter what though, you will get attacked by random people all day long. You'll get used to it, I promise.

As long as someone only attacks you once or twice (or even a few times more than that, once you get higher up in level), it's no big deal. It happens. It happens all the time to everyone and it's nothing to take personally. Well, I do tend to attack people whose names seem ridiculous, stupid or just catch my eye, so maybe it's a LITTLE personal...

However, if someone is attacking you until you are snuffed (i.e. killed), you're within your rights to be pissed. Depending on your playing style and the circumstances, you can decide how to react or whether to react at all (often the most prudent course. Be aware that every time you retaliate or futher escalate the situation, that the other person will probably respond in kind. Things can quite swiftly get out of control. Also, watch out for how far you want to take things; don't wind up being worse than the 'bad' guy!

If you are being bullied, your possible reponses might be:

• You could attack them back. This is a pretty rookie mistake that everyone makes at first -- you probably don't want to try attacking someone if they've attacked you and won several times. You will lose. Unless you've leveled up and got a bunch more mafia members since they attacked you, in all likelihood you'll still lose to them.
• You could hitlist them, but that'll definitely center you on their radar again and they'll either attack, rob or hitlist you, or even share out your link so all their pals, clan members, buddies, relatives, pets and random strangers will come for you.
• You can try robbing them if they're lower level than you and you have your levels-worth in mafia members and decent stats/equipment. Again, this will definitely get their attention and possibly lead to your link being shared out. (When robbing, each player only brings as many mafia members to the fight as they have levels. So a level 80 with 501 mafia could be robbed by a level 92 with 92 mafia since the level 80 only gets to use 80 mafia members and the level 92 gets to use all 92 of his.)
• You can ignore them and go about leveling as fast as you can.
• You can save their Facebook ID or bookmark them using Bobby Heartrate's user tools: www.heartrate.se/user/######## and
  • save the link for when you hopefully outlevel them or
  • submit the link on a forum/discussion board where people will take them out for you.

  • befriend them! They can no longer attack you if they are your friend -- they can still hitlist you, but if you offer the olive branch of joining mafias, they probably won't :)

If you're not necessarily being targeted and you're just tired of everyone hammering you, you can try several things.

• Grow your mafia. The more people you have in your mafia, the less people will fight you.
  • It can be sort of time consuming to add lots of mafia members, but with the tips and tools I'll give you, it'll be that much easier.
  • There's no better feeling than when you finally reach 501 mafia members, and you get attacked a whole lot less!
  • You get the added benefit of being able to buy more limited-edition loot, Mafia Mike's properties and getting passive experience when people in your mafia fight other people!
• Make sure you've got the strongest equipment you can get -- and enough of it to cover your whole mafia!
  • Use the combat calculator at http://www.mafia-wars.info to see where you need to improve
• Put points into Attack and Defense
  • It is crucial that you spend points into Attack and Defense if you want to be able to go toe-to-toe with people of similar level and mafia-size. The way the combat is calculated is a bit of a trade secret, but you can read some interesting info about it here.
• Level up!