If you want to know how to win fights in Mafia Wars, you've come to the right place. If you read this, you should have a pretty good idea of whether or not you'll be able to beat your opponent in a fight. Or perhaps you've attacked him several times and just can't seem to win? Here are the things you can do to make your character stronger in fights:

1. Increase your Mafia size

This is becoming a common theme no doubt. A bigger mafia will win more fights! Regardless of level, you can use 501 Mafia Members (i.e. you + 500) in any fight. The closer you are to that number, the better off you are going to be!

2. Equip your Mafia

Each Mafia member can use 1 (and only 1) weapon, armor, and vehicle when attacking other players. There is no advantage in having more than 1 weapon per mafia member. ONLY THE BEST WEAPON WILL BE USED IN COMBAT! The only thing that matters when picking the best equipment for OFFENSE is its ATTACK rating. Defense is not important! Here are the best items you can collect for offense:

Weapon:

TNT - 42 Attack, 20 defense - drops from the "Raid the Arms Depot" job in the El Padrino tier.

Vehicle:

Hu-9 Helicopter - 36 attack, 27 defense - drops from the "Attack the Army Command Post" job in the El Padrino tier.

Armor:

Guerrilla Squad - 30 attack, 34 defense - drops from the "Supply the FRG with Some Extra Muscle" job in the El Padrino tier.

As you can see, the items from jobs have a significantly higher level of attack than the store bought versions. Keep doing the jobs listed above to collect these items if you want a better chance of winning fights! Additionally, when you master a tier all 3 times, items from jobs in that tier times will have a +10% drop rate. So before doing a job to collect items, make sure the whole tier is mastered. Furthermore, having more than 1 weapon, armor, or vehicle does little for your mafia- in other words, if you have 501 TNT, collecting any more weapons will do nothing for your offensive power. Collecting TNT for everyone in your mafia can take some time, but doing so will give you an edge in fights!

3. Put points in Attack

Even a full mafia with the best equipment will struggle if there are no points in the attack category. Even if you are following the leveling guide, at some point, you will need to put your stat points in "Attack" if you wish to be successful in attacking a lot of players. The formula for attacking other player seems to use attack as a multiplicative function - that is Mafia Size and equipment alone aren't enough to win fights, you need a solid combination of both of these factors.

4. Do not waste godfather points on reward items

This goes right along with point #3. At the moment, reward items flat out are not good (maybe the developers will improve them in the future). The weapons, armor, and vehicles rarely have much more attack or defense rating then what is already available through jobs. Sometimes it is even worse! Rather than get the reward items, spend your points on the +4 stat upgrade, and put points in attack. This will do much more for your fighting ability then buying these items.

Summary

By increasing your Mafia size (up to 501), making sure your mafia is stocked up on the best equipment, by putting some stat points in Attack, and by spending Godfather points on stats to add to attack, you can be sure to increase your chances of winning. However, you will never win 100% of fights - opponents who are Top Mafia bodyguards have a chance to always win on defense, plus critical hits, which are infrequent but occur, will always cause a loss in a fight.