Declare War Feature: Activated

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Zynga predicted that the new Declare War feature would be on for everybody by midnight Zynga time.  It's now 11:45 pm and War Help posts are all over the news feeds.  It's nice to see things implemented on schedule.  This is a really exciting and much needed improvement to the War feature of the game.  Nobody liked the fact that you could only declare war on your mafia members and it caused a lot of problems for both the declarer and the declared.  Read my article Sneak Attack for more information on that.  It used to be that we got 3 exp points for each war we helped in.  That was nerfed to 0 exp points and lost interest in the war feature all together. The only players declaring war were doing so to earn the Veteran achievement badge.

The only thing you got for helping in wars was a loot item that did nothing for your stats.  First we got a Cue Ball (19/16) and shortly after the war experience nerf it was changed to a Pair of Pet Tigers (28/12).  The loss of interest can be demonstrated by the following image.  You can see by the number of each loot item I own that many players just stopped declaring wars.

You can see on your fight page the Declare War tab has been changed.  It now says "Compete with enemies" instead of "Compete with friends".

When you visit a friends profile page, you will see the option to declare war is no longer there.  It now says "Help in War" instead of "Declare War".

To declare a war, go to your fight page from any city and click on the Declare War tab.

The new rules for declaring war can be found by clicking on "What's this?".  They are the same as before but now we get to attack our enemies.  The time allowed between wars has been changed from 5 to 16 hours.  The loot items you get for assisting in wars have dramatically improved but we can only get 5 per war period.

You are given a list of 8 players to choose from.  There appears to be 2 different looks for this page.

Select one player to start a war.  The timer now starts at 16 hours so there is more than enough time to finish.  I found a second look for this screen as well.

The Fightlist has also been changed and a "Declare War" button has been added for each player.  This is a bit of an overkill since we can only declare one war every 16 hours.

The good news is the Declare War button only appears if you are eligible to declare a war.  If you timer is on, you won't see this when you are fighting.

You can also go to the profile page of anybody who is not in your mafia and click "Declare War".  I like this option.  If you have a beef with somebody, you can piss them off by declaring war on them (the following image is a random example and I have nothing against Don House).

If you don't have all positions of your Top Mafia filled, you won't be able to declare a war on anybody.

Right after you declare a war, you have the option to attack one of the players on the other side.  Simply click on their picture to initiate the attack.  I wasn't able to do so because my war was already finished by the time I scrolled down and clicked on attack!  This option also has a different look on other accounts.

To rally for help, click the "Ask Friends for Help" button.  My mafia was able to help me by clicking on "Help Jennifer" located on the lower right hand side of my war help post.

Once my mafia killed off my enemy and all of their Top Mafia, I won the war.

I got two loot items and my helpers got one.  Here are all the items you can get for declaring and helping in wars.  We need one of each to get the Warlord achievement.

The timer is visible on your Declare War Tab so when it's gone you will know it's time to declare another war.

When you log into your account, you will also see a little notification on the Fight Tab that tells you if someone declared a war against you.  It will say "War Declared" if the war is still in progress and "War Over" if it's finished.  

When you click on the notification, you will be directed to the war page.  Hopefully you it before the war is over and have time to ask your mafia for help.  If you don't get a chance to ask for help, you will most likely lose.

You can also see who has declared war on you and check the status from your  Beta Live Updates.  You get the option to attack them if the war is over or check on the status if it's still in progress.

You will want to help your mafia with wars because it's nice to help people and the helper rewards are worth it.  To do so, look for war help requests in your news feeds.  You can help as many friends as you want but you will only get loot items for the first 5 of each day.  You can only help people who are in your mafia.  If someone is your Facebook friend but hasn't been added to your mafia, you can't help.  If one of your mafia members rallied help for one of their mafia members and that person isn't in your mafia, you can't help them either.  They really need to change this because the majority of the war help requests will be from those who rallied for help.  I got a lot of these messages before I found someone that was in my mafia.

If you attempt to help your friend but the war is completed, you will get a message telling you the war is over but you can send that person a gift. When you click on "Send gift", you are directed to your Free Gifts page.

You will also get a lot of messages that say "You can not attack this target".  This happens when a war is not finished but somebody else kills the target you selected.

I was finally able to help one of my mafia members, Nick Shamas, by clicking on "Help Nick".

I was brought to his war page and I clicked on the one of the living profile pictures.  You can also ask your mafia to help your friend by clicking on the "Ask Friends for Help" button.

With the help of others, Nick was able to win his war.

For helping him, I received a Pair of Armed Biker Boots (27/59).

I was also given the opportunity to share Victory Coins with my own mafia members.

To collect Victory Coins from your mafia, look for the posts above and click on "Get Reward".  You get 5 Victory Coins for everyone you click on.  I'm not sure how many we can get a day.  After about 5 these, I got a "Cannot claim this reward" message of the next few I tried.

You can't accept Victory Coins from yourself or those who are not added to your mafia.

To check you progress towards the Warlord achievement, click on "See All Rewards" for any war page.  The ones you own will be highlighted in yellow.

You can also check the achievement itself.  I think Zynga made a mistake because mine say "In Progress (6/20)".  The message above says "Earn all 16 Declare War rewards to claim the Warlord Achievement.".

Once you help in your 6th war for the day, you will get a message telling you that your not eligible for helper rewards and the amount of time you have to wait till you are.

You can see what items you will get before you help in someones wars. You might want to be selective in your first 5 assists.  If the item won't help your stats or help you get the achievement, you may want to pass and find a different war to help in.  I'm not saying you should help your friends in wars that offer the loot items of less quality.  You can always go back and help once you get your 5 items for the day.

Overall this is a great feature.  The only real problem comes from posting help requests for your friends.  Either Zynga needs to do something about this or we all need to not ask for help when we assist our friends.  One of my mafia members Ed Moreau addressed this issue in a nicely written Forum Board post.

Thanks to Mike Nestor for sending me screen shots of the pages for declaring war and requesting help that are different from mine.