Mafia Strength and Family Property Bonus clarified

It's nice to wake up and see some positive change in the game, for once! Zynga implemented some minor changes to the Family Property recently, which is why there's now a new banner about the Artillery Station and Family Properties on your Mafia Wars home page banner.

The main change, which Keith noted on our fan page, is that mafia defense and attack strength is now differentiated from the bonus added by your Family Properties. In the days following the release of the Artillery Station, many players were confused by fluctuations and seeming losses in their mafia defense strength. We learned, eventually, through trial and error and a late explanation from Zynga, that this wasn't our actual Mafia strength changing in most cases, but changes in the bonus given by the Artillery Station. Separating the display of defense strength and bonus strength was even a suggestion I made in that post, however I'm sure I wasn't the only one with that idea; it was common sense. And now if you look at your fight page, you'll see Zynga has done just that. Hover your mouse over the yellow number in parenthesis and you'll it is labeled as your Family Property Bonus.

It's not often I say this, but...thanks Zynga!

This was actually the first thing I noticed, from my news feed, before I even logged into the game. I think the posts asking for artillery shells have gotten a nice face lift, too. These posts now bear a little Family pride simply by identifying the Family name of the person asking for artillery shells. I like.

EDIT...so we can now collect more than 20 artillery shells a day--we can get 20 a day from gifts sent to us, and I *think* we can get 20 a day from a combination of clicking on other players' posts and others clicking on our posts. As long as this can still be done daily, then this is a good thing as it doubles the number of shells we get and save. This will help a bit, because upgrades have been so slow as to lose significance and interest. I'll check it again tomorrow.

There may be more, but I'm still on my first cup of coffee :P