Sindicate:Dont Increase Army Size If You Dont Have To

From HiveWiki

All else being equal, increasing your Army Size decreases defense relative to other players in the new bracket you will likely find yourself in. If you have a larger army size, your top [Army Size] hoods, those that form your Army Strength, must on average be lower in Power than those of a player with smaller Army Size, and the lowest power hood in your TAS is the upper limit of Power for all other hoods, including those in defense buildings. Player with fewer but bigger hoods in any given defense will be able to defend longer against attack than a player with many smaller hoods adding up to the same defense value. Since - at lower Power levels anyway - each attack decreases defender health by 1 point per defender, and decreases the defense value by (number of defenders multiplied by upgrades), a defense filled with 4 Power 50s (full health 200) will take 4 points of damage (multiplied by upgrades and rounded off) per hit, while a defense of 200 filled with 8 Power 25s will lose 8 points of health per hit, and effectively lose (8 multiplied by upgrades) from it's defense with each attack. A defense of 4 Power 50s will take much longer to break through than a defense of 8 Power 25s.

There are usually only two good reasons to increase Army Strength.

Increasing it from 2 to 3 only diminishes defense a relatively small amount but greatly increases your ability to attack and kidnap hoods, so if you are an active, aggressive warmoder who is online a lot, 3 is okay, but really, you can use your Bar to the same effect.

If you're lower Power than the minimum threshold for your Title (eg a 50 Power Associate, where the threshold for promotion is 60), lower titled opponents gain an alert bonus against you, but you can decrease their advantage by increasing your Army Size. Your defenses will still suffer relative to what is possible for other players of the same Army Strength as you, but you'll be able to kidnap from lower titled players more easily.