Decorations...

Surround your best buildings with decorations to increase your profits.
Good decorations to use are those that give more bouses than the space they take up. Bronze statue, pink flowers, arboretum, and the plaza are good examples. Put the large decorations as far away from the center as possible so you have space to fill in more little decorations.
You can create another ring around your initial profit square with some decorations. Iit is really very time consuming to move each building into the center to collect the max bonus. This also allows to collect the money and xp faster, thus increasing my bonus bar.
Franchises add bonus too, but are very large (5x5) and can block things behind them. Consider putting trees and goods storage behind franchises if you want to use them for bonuses. You get +2%/ floor.

Put what you need in the center !!!!

Put your crops in the middle of your game if you are in short goods supply so your neighbors will help you get goods faster and harvest them without using your energy.
Shipping is far more profitable than farming, so work on expanding your shipping business! You can fit as many as 8 boats/ pier.

A simple strategy about neighbors...

If you need goods: Tend your neighbor's crops and put your crops in the middle of your city for your neighbors to tend.

If you need coins: Tend their housing, water their crops, speed up the boats, tend businesses (slow), or cut down trees.

And an useful tip....

2 neighbors tended the same boat/crop!
- When a neighbor harvests your goods and an empty ship/ plot is left behind, you can refill that spot with a 1 hour good (like Shanghai shipping or Eggplants). When you accept help from the next neighbor, the spot will be ready to collect again!
- You might build a strategy around this were you leave a ship or crop ready for a little while and let your neighbors all tend that spot over and over while you just refill it.

Have priorities

There are some limiting factors in this game (energy, goods, money, etc.) so you have to choose the best things to focus on if you are trying to level up quickly. Keep an eye on your XP bar. If you're about to level up, try to use up all your energy first as you will get a partial refill. You may want to hold off on accepting neighbor help if you're really close.

1. Supply your franchises! - Franchises pay out the best ratio of coins/ good. Franchise your neighbor's cities the more you can
If you need goods first:
a. Send the 5 minute Charlie Train (does not use energy and brings back lots of goods!)
b. Let your neighbors tend your ships and crops.
c.Collecting from ships is better than croping!!!

2. Activate the neighbors
Accept their help and follow them around. Try to get your bonus meter up all the way! 5 bonuses for the first stage, and 4 for to fill the bar for each next stage (there are 10 stages, so click on 51 bonus items).

3. Harvest your soon to expire ships/ crops until your storage is full

4. Collect from your best paying buildings (or the ones you need collectibles from)

5. Don't forget your community buildings! They usually give you an energy or 2 too!

6. Use remaining energy on highest payout to lowest payout buildings and to refill your goods.

The energy cycle

One energy can be replenished every five minutes. Up to 30 Energies can be stored, representing 2.5 hours.What is I call the "energy cycle". To make maximum use of energy, set your alarm to wakeup every two hours during the night, and for every two hours while at work; so you dont loose out on any energy. I suppose that this not the case case for normal people, so the best solution is to use your energy in an optimum way. My first advices are:

1. Reaching a new level fills the Energy Meter, so its a good idea to use up your energy just before reaching a new level. Check your xp needed to reach a new level and do the actions you need with keeping in your mind not having energy when you reach the level. It wouldn't be the nicest feeling not gaining energy cause your energy meter was always full!
2. Some of the Collections give Energy as a reward. In my point of view you have to use this energy only when you need to. The good thing is that is added to your meter (for example 30+3...), but the bad thing is that when you reach 30 then the energy meter stops, so you lose all this energy you could gain when you are idle!
3. Visit your neighbors!Every time you visit a neighbor you gain energy (and xp,coins as well...). You can gain only once in every 24hrs and also gain 3 energy the first time you visit a new neighbor. My advice is before visiting your neighbors to use some energy, so you gain new energy while your visit!

An introduction to the game...

The first thing a potential player has to know about CityVille is that the most important asset he/she has is energy. Energy is not unlimited and is gained in 3 ways (during time/collections/gifts) which we will analyse later. When we play, the first thing we have to have in our mind is that all the actions we are doing are limited to the amount of energy we have, so we have to do things that help us grow without spending a lot of energy for. It is important knowing that all the actions that require spending energy can also be done from our neighbors instead of us. It's also very important to know when exactly we will play again. This is because there is a virtual energy cycle in the game (we speak in details in a later post..) so actions have to be seen in that time horizon.