Some players use Farmville as a creative outlet and could care less about scores, while others are "in it for the money". There are various goals to work towards, such as, mastery signs, ribbons, levels, and design. Depending on what's important for you at the time, these strategies may be of help:

 

The key to achieve certain goals, such as barn raisings and collectibles, is to have lots of (active) neighbors. This is especially true for co-ops.
You can find prospects many ways but, the best is by referral. Look for new names in the message board or on signs they leave on your neighbor's farms. Go to that neighbor's Facebook page, find that person in their friend's list.
Invite your prospect with a brief personal message such as "Farmville neighbor?" and be sure to mention how you found them ("Re: neighbor's name").
Try not to abuse your neighbors or friends. If you see they are not actively playing, avoid sending them gifts and posting your visits.

 
This tip saves you lots of time if you don't have all your vehicles yet. Even if you do, your neighbors will appreciate the time it saves them when they visit to fertilize your crops.

Note the starting location of your avatar when your farm initially loads and move or delete any object that occupies that position.
The goal is to surround the avatar with objects (other than crops) to prevent it from following you around. You can do this with a minimum of 4 1x1 objects, such as hay bales, but almost anything can be used, even small animals that are set to "stay".

 
The primary activity for earning XP points and coins (which can buy XP), is plowing, seeding, and harvesting the most crops you can afford.

Maximize the number of plots to the exclusion of almost everything else. Build plots from the bottom right boundary towards the upper left. This leaves a 2x2 row at the top/left for trees, small animals, and hay bale exchanges (see below).
Based on how often you can log back in, plant crops in all the spaces you have that yield the highest XP in the shortest time. Most often, I found that limited edition items offered the best deals but, that may not always be the case. If you anticipate having significant coins left over, leave some room for a final step below.
After planting, you can engage in other activities to earn coins and XP, such as, visiting other farms, finding neighbors, and most important, gifting.
The last thing before you log off is to convert ALL left over coins to XP. Depending on how much time and patience you have, you can convert them in one big inefficient swoop by buying the biggest thing you can afford and then selling it (1% XP + 5% refund). The most cost effective conversion is plow, plant soybeans, delete, repeat (10% XP). The next best is buy and recycle hay bales (5% XP + 5% refund). Do this until you have just enough coins left over to make the last plow and high-value seeding of the areas you were temporarily using.

 
Contrary to the Leveling Up Strategy, for certain ribbons you must save up lots of coins until you have enough to buy everything required for a specific blue ribbon, such as Decorations or Fences.

Delete enough harvested land to contain all the required objects. If you have excess coins, first plow and plant soybeans before deleting. (Gives 3xp for only 30 coins.)
Buy everything you need at the lowest price and smallest footprint to earn the highest ribbon value and then use the Recycle Tool to recover 5% of the loss. Ex. For buildings, you might just buy Rest Tents (1,000 coins, 2x2 footprint, 50 coin refund).
Plow back what you dug up and resume planting the most you can afford to cover all your plowed areas.

 

Horse Stable
Keep a few extra horses just outside the stable. After the stable is harvested, remove one horse and replace it with a horse that is at least 34% ready. The whole stable will become ready immediately. If a horse is fully ready, you must use the "move" tool, else it will be harvested before you can move it to the stable. Repeat exchanging until there are no more ready horses.
Dairy Farms
This works the same way as the horse stables, except there is no early harvesting. To move a ready cow to the barn, you must use the "move" tool, else the cow will be harvested before you can move it into the barn.
The following strategies were written before Farmville allowed expanded housings. As a result, you may find it way too tedious to follow these procedures, however, they do produce nice bonuses in coins.
Chicken Coop
Keep a few extra chickens in excess of your coop's capacity at all times. Sell off the lowest valued ones and, eventually, you'll wind up with all golden chicks.
As soon as you collect eggs from the coop, empty it completely.
Wait until one of the chicks is ready to lay eggs outside the coop. Do not collect its egg.
Move that chick into the empty coop and the coop will become "ready". Now move all the lowest % chicks into the coop and they will ALL be ready.
Collect eggs from the coop and start over with another ready chick.
To minimize mouse movement, keep any ready horses (34% or more) at least 4 plots away from the stables. Empty the stable keeping the fresh horses as close as possible for moving them back in with the "move" tool.
Nursery Barn
Initially, they don't make economic sense. The footprint of 10x8 is equivalent to 80 calves or 40 foals and yet they only hold 20 animals. Expand this as soon as practical.

 
Co-op farming seems to add a competative edge to the game but, it's really not about beating others. There are times you have to do a lot of work and planning just to see it fail and sometimes you get something for nothing. These strategies should help improve your odds of success:

Maximize your crop layout by eliminating all wasted space without impacting too much on your other goals. You are not penalized for deleting unplowed land. So, you can completely reorganize your layout after a harvest. Also, store large items that you plan to keep, in an expanded barn. Don't waste valuable space storing items that can be purchased (again) with coins or by gifting.
Get to know your neighbors. You don't have to go as far as making a spreadsheet for keeping track of their neighbor count and plot size but, it helps. The number of neighbors you have in common, is also a key factor to keep track of.
Pre-Seeding
For non-crafting jobs, there isn't enough time to seed and harvest twice to make gold. But, there's a proven way to achieve that 2nd harvest within the allotted time by seeding crops "before" you start a co-op.
Allow your crops to mature at least 30% before you start. You can even wait until after they're ready for harvesting but, it won't earn you a 3rd round in time for gold.
Farmville knows the amount you seeded since you joined the co-op and can only credit each harvest against that amount. To make your pre-seeded crops count towards your goal, you must first seed at least that amount after starting (or joining) as follows:
First perform a new seeding of the crop to be harvested. Delete, plow, re-seed, repeating a number of times to equal the amount you wish to harvest at one time.
Let's say you just performed 8 such seedings. Now harvest 8 crops. Plow and seed those plots before harvesting the next 8 plots, and so on.
Another technique is to put your largest object, such as a mansion, in storage. Plow, seed, delete using that space, keeping track of the number seedings before restoring the object. To seed different crops after the harvest, do enough repetitions to cover all pre-existing crops.
The Combine is a "must-have" which makes this process very easy and automatic, except for the first few crops.
In most cases, unless you start (or join early) with a full harvest, the co-op will end before you can harvest that 2nd round. In which case, you can use those left over crops for the next co-op that you start or join.
This pre-seeding gives you a head start and greatly improves your odds on a co-op award but, those post-seedings that you delete, will cost some coins.
MVP Award
To almost guarantee an MVP award, you must START a co-op with at least 300 ready-to-harvest crops. This alone won't guarantee it if the co-op does not make gold, in which case, someone with a much larger plot size can outrun you for the MVP with a bronze medal. Having many neighbors to help achieve a gold award, is important here.
Gold Helper
When deciding to join an existing co-op, see if there is still enough time to seed for gold, as follows: Subtract the time left from the time allotted for the bronze medal to get the number of hours already expired. Subtract that from the hours to complete gold and then subtract the crop maturation time:
For Pumpkins or Tomatoes you
Rice or Tea Party
Carrots or Chili
Morning Glories
Pattypan Squash or PB&J
Grapes, Tulips, or Combos 		need  1 day 5 hours
1 day 17 hours
1 day 11 hours
1 day 21 hours
2 days 14 hours
3 days 20 hours
When done properly and with luck of good timing, you can get as many as 4 gold helper awards in a single day. Use the chart as a guide to join a co-op that will end the earliest within the time allotted for gold. If you have pre-seeded crops to contribute (in time), all the better, as you want the co-op to end as soon as possible and go on to the next. The percentage of maturity of those crops will proportionally extend the time on the above chart. If the gold is missed (either because you miscalculated or others failed to harvest in time), don't hang around. Immediately go to the next, which you should be looking for at least two moves ahead.

Important:
Above all, do not ruin it for your neighbors by seeding (or pre-seeding) without sticking around to harvest them all. Also, do NOT quit a co-op that you seeded, thinking you will will re-join and harvest it later. You probably will not be able to find it and your neighbors will be stuck unable to harvest those crops.

 

Before you harvest anything, first go to one of your Market Stalls and select a bushel of that crop. You'll get your Mastery bonus sooner. If you already have it, you'll get extra XP for every matching crop harvested within the next two hours.
The "Move" tool allows you to rearrange your farm without penalty. You can move seeded land without having to delete and replow.
Get double gifts by first collecting them via farmville.com and then going to the games section in facebook.com.
Eliminate sheds to make room for crops and other decorations by transferring all stored items to the cellar.
 

The Farmville development team works constantly to provide new animals, specialty objects, ribbons, and other incentives to keep it interesting even for seasoned players. Always be on the lookout for new ribbons and special items that work to your advantage. If you have anything to add or If you find some of the tips here no longer work because farmville was "enhanced", please notify me below and I'll update this page accordingly.

This page was updated
Monday February 14, 2011
 

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