Slide to the outside and a two-gate row takes 99, not 46
Sitting on a gate caps the squad it can swallow at 46. Hugging the outside edge more than doubles that. It is the single largest skill gap in the game and nothing on screen mentions it.
Updated 31 August 2026
A gate only fires if enough of your crowd commits to it. The threshold is a fixed slice of your formation width, which means a wide squad is always partly in the neighbouring gate as well — and the neighbour takes its cut.
What follows from that is not obvious and is worth a great deal.
The numbers
| Row shape | Largest squad that takes ONE gate |
|---|---|
| Two gates, sitting on the gate centre | 46 |
| Two gates, sliding to hug the outside | 99 |
| Three gates, taking the MIDDLE gate | 46 |
| Three gates, taking an OUTER gate, sliding | 51 |
On a two-gate row, moving from the centre of your gate to the outside edge of the road takes you from 46 troops to 99. Same row, same gate, double the squad.
Why it works
On the outside of a two-gate row there is nothing beyond you. Everything spilling out of your formation spills onto empty road instead of into the other gate, so the other gate never reaches its threshold and never fires.
In the middle of a three-gate row you have neighbours on both sides and they are symmetric. There is no position that saves you: at 47 troops or more you will always feed one of them. That is not a skill issue, it is the geometry, and the right move is to stop trying.
What to actually do
- Two-gate row: commit early and drive at the outside lip, not the gate centre.
- Three-gate row with a big squad: take an outer gate and slide. The middle gate is a trap above 46.
- Three-gate row where the middle gate is clearly the best one: it is only worth it under 46 troops. Above that, work out what the outer gate costs you and take it anyway.
The catch
At 99 troops the usable window is about a centimetre and a half of road. At 90 it is about thirty. Treat 90 as the working ceiling and 99 as a thing that exists — the extra nine troops are not worth going over the ledge for, and the ledge is right there.
Is this wrong?
Then say so
These are written from the games’ own balance references, but a number that was true in one build can stop being true in the next. If something here does not match what you are seeing, that is worth knowing.