Jun 16 2009
Mafia Wars - Cuba - 1st Look
So it would appear that Zynga has made a good improvement to the game by adding Cuba as a second country for exploitation by your mob. Here are some preliminary observations based on the early introduction of the Cuba location.
Money
US dollars are of no use in Cuba and you must acquire Cuban pesos to do anything. Initially fights are a poor way to get money since the locals do not have much money (just like the reality in the real Cuba). Since your cash is very valuable, you should protect what you don’t spend in the Bank.
The most useful way of getting money is by taking over a Business and improving its ability to produce items that can be sold. Upgrading the Business is just as important as getting enough items to complete Jobs. You must actually sell the stock to gain the money (every 3 hours) unlike the approach in NY where the money supply increases each hour without player intervention.
Hospital
Since you have little money in Cuba, you will need to Fly to NY regularly to heal in the Hospital there using $US. It will take some time to amass sufficient extra cash to visit Cuban hospitals to heal your wounds.
Loot
Cuba offers additional loot opportunities in the form of weapons, armor, vehicles and gifts. Loot is shared between both countries (with the exception of gifts). The first three categories get shared in fights (in either country) and the package is automatically decided by the game so you may have opportunities to sell off items that have Upkeep costs if they are extras.
Mob Size
The size of your mafia is the same in each country. If you add additional players, they are added to both countries.
Beta
Cuba is in trial mode and expect to see changes in the future, although it would appear that it has been pretty well thought out and most changes will likely be minor. There is no sign of Robbing in Cuba in the same format as NY.
All in all, Cuba is a welcome infusion of something new to the game of Mafia Wars and we can only hope that it is the first of many different locations. I can easily see the opportunity to add Chicago, Las Vegas and Russia using this approach. This will ensure that the game will continue to maintain a dominant position in both the Facebook and MySpace versions.
