In Mafia Wars, is there any benefit to having more than 501 members of your mafia?

Question

It doesn't appear that you can use more than 501 people in a fight, is there any benefit to continuing to collect new mafia members after you reach that number?

Answer 1

A long long time ago when I used to play this, more than 501 was useless. The formula has since been revised but it was to give more weight to equipment. You can check here for the details.

Update: After a little more searching, this made things a little bit clearer. As far as the fights are concerned 501 is the cap, any more is useless. But otherwise the number of mafia members that can help is equal to your level. So if you are level 603, then 603 mafia members can come to your aid, etc.

Answer 2

yes there is a very good advantage to having more than 501 mafia members. This does not lie soley within the game but as part of the game itself. For instance if you are being attacked by the same 10 people over and over in consecutive days these are called bullies. My mafia is over 6K. How do I keep that when fb only allows 5k friends? I do not delete my personal friends from my mafia just from my fb friends. They are readily available a moments notice. When bullies attack they are not expecting 6k people to attack them back. It is one of the very best defensive moves. You are not the only one hitting them your mafia is. That means all of their mafia. As far as individual fights from fightlist you can only use 501 of your strongest attack and defense players. sometimes these are not the same. Your strongest attack person is usually not your strongest defense person. Remember as you are on the fightlist you are not only attacking but also being attacked. So having more than 501 mafia is very beneficial.