Maximizing Space in Farmville

When playing Farmville the first thing you notice is how little room you are actually given. While you can expand your farm later on it is important to start out on the right foot. While everyone always says to use most of your space to plot they tend to neglect a couple other tidbits.

Trees

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Trees in Farmville can be a great source of income, however they can also lose you income if placed poorly. For instance, you do not want to place a line of trees in the middle of your farm. The tops of the trees will cover up valuable space that you could use to plant crops or place animals. One exception is if you plan on being a "Tree Farmer". One way of playing Farmville involves planting nothing but trees, no crops, no animals, just tree's. By filling the majority of your farm with only trees it is possible to pull in 100k a day.

Trees also offer a couple other benefits for you, first they never wither. This means you can easily walk away from your farm for as often as you like without worry about losing any money. The other noticeable bonus is that tree's have no animation* to them this will help your farm keep from lagging while playing.

For the Farmville player who wants it all, try to place a tree line along the top edges of your farm. This will keep them out of the middle, allowing you to maximize space while at the same time giving you all the bonuses of having tree's. Also worth mentioning, unless you are going for a specific look to your farm try to only use the highest grossing trees available. Here are the top 5 and bottom 5 trees, in terms of earnings potential.

HIGHEST GROSSING

1. Gingko Tree - 130
2. Mango - 130
3. Olive - 112
4. Passion Fruit - 93
5. Lime - 75

LOWEST GROSSING

1. Cherry - 18
2. Yellow Maple - 25
3. Apple - 28
4. Plum - 30
5. Tamarind - 35

Note about this list - Only permanent trees were included, limited time only items were not taken into consideration. This is also showing how much you earn from 1 tree and 1 harvest. If you take the time to harvest into consideration then an individual tree may go up or down. For instance the Olive tree has an hourly rate of approximately  19.48 while the Gingko tree has an hourly rate of 30.14, this assumes a 4x4 grid of trees (or 16).
 

*(for the most part, the Japanese Falling Blossom does have some animation but is ornamental with no harvest)


Animals

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Animals can be a very lucrative way of earning gold and experience in Farmville, however they have a couple drawbacks that everyone should be aware of. Compared to trees, some animals are just not as rewarding. Most of the foals and stallions take up the same amount of space four tree's would. While some of the smaller animals take up the same amount of space, they produce half the amount of gold.

While you need to be careful about maximizing profit when placing animals another thing to keep in mind is lag. Each and every animal is animated in Farmville. This means the requirements to properly load and display your farm increase drastically when you add a lot of animals. For the most part each animation sequence has 4 individual pictures it needs to load. This means that while one tree uses one image, each type of animal uses 4.

If you are already starting to see some lag while playing Farmville you may want to keep this in mind while decorating your farm. Users with low end computer may choose to place one animal of each type to minimize the impact, while high end computer users may opt to build an entire horse ranch with thousands of animals on it.

One easy way to see how much of an impact a farm full of animals will cause is to simply look through your neighbors. Find a couple with tons of animals and try moving around, zooming in and out, going into full screen etc. This will give you a rough idea about how laggy your own farm will become as you add more animals.


Following the above format with tree's here are the lowest and highest grossing base animals available in the game.

HIGHEST PROFIT

1. Belted Cow - 3,000
2. Arapawa Goat - 1,200
3. Saddle Back Pig - 1,000
4. Dutch Rabbit -150
5. Percheron Horse - 140

(The Snow Leapord sits at #4 with a harvest earning of 300, however it is iPhone only.)

LOWEST PROFIT

1. Cow - 6
2. Chicken - 8
3. Long Horn/Brown/Groovy/Holstein Cows - 12
4. Brown Chicken - 16
5. Neapolitan/Pink/Simmental/Referee Cows - 18

Just like with the Trees list, this is only referencing how much gold is earned when harvesting a single animal. This is not showing a earnings per hour potential.

Buildings

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Buildings in Farmville are some what of a tricky thing when talking about maximizing space, mostly because they are so big. For somethings like nurseries or stables they are a must. Once placed on the farm you can fill those types of buildings with animals that will greatly increase the earning potential available. On the other hand, some buildings like the Post Office or the School do nothing once placed, basically costing you gold in the long run. While they may look nice and help your farm look like the real deal, gameplay wise they do nothing for you.

It should be noted though that buildings often times offer the greatest experience gain in Farmville. For that reason you should place them on the farm, then sell them off.

Buildings that you want to keep around, such as the Nursery, Stables, Chicken Coupe and such need to be placed in such a way that they take up as little space as possible. This means either up against the top edges, or down just a little bit saving room for some trees behind them. One effective method is lining the top edges with a row or two of trees then placing your buildings up against them. Because a building can stick up farther than it sits it is possible to end up covering up valuable real estate if you place them anywhere but the edges.