Does anybody knows how long does it take for IT and Advanced Technologies to start developing in the city?

And how to increase Environment Polls? That is, make it start developing.

Advanced technology seems to be attracted by education. In my main city, I didn't start painting industry until after I already had fully-funded elementary schools, highschools, and a college, and advanced technology just rushed to move in. I ensured I got only advanced technology by raising the tax rate on the other kinds of industry to 20%.

For environment, I'd agree that this is one of the hardest ones to keep maxed. First of all, make sure you're dealing with the easy kinds of pollution. Water pollution and garbage can both be eliminated entirely with by investing in the right buildings. Air pollution is the tricky one. I ban heavy polluting industry by raising its tax rate to 20%, and do my best to keep traffic under control by placing subway stations (getting my sims to use those stations, though, is hit and miss. Some of my stations have like 300% usage, and other stations have like 10% usage).

Be sure to check the overlay to check what areas are desirable for high tech industry. HT industries usually don't like to be around heavy industries. Typically I'd zone a small industrial area relatively close to my residential area, as dictated by the desirability window for high tech industries. I believe that an elementary school (and a library perhaps) are typically enough to get the first high tech industries to come to town.

I noticed something, once I got it going in one city it showed up REALLY fast in other new cities I started in the same region. At first I thought it was my imagination but by the time I started city #4 some of the very 1st Industry buildings were Tech.

That is... sort of correct.

To be more precise:

First, High-Tech industry demand is generated in cities where education is higher than 150 (you can check on the graphs for education, also you can check this in education per age).

The same mechanic also controls agriculture, when education is lower than 50, agricultural demand is generated. Usually I think that second part is bullshit and install the mod SPAM (that overrides this).



The region works this way: Every time you save your city, and exit the game, or leave to the region, the game updates all cities that have connections with it, part of this update is calculate commuters, if your city has people trying to commute, when you load nearby cities, the commuters there will calculate what they will do, this includes trying to settle in that city (finding jobs on it, or making new buildings on it... I heard that the game tries to calculate enough commuters to use 10% of a nearby city available space), or trying to commute to yet another city.


So RCI is NOT regionwide, but RCI of one city DO affect another city, the closest, the more affected.
Also if you are relying on region-gameplay, when loading a city, it is always good to allow some time for new buildings to calculate, and for new commuters to be calculated, if you don't wait, all incoming commuters will "disappear", and when you load your previous city (the one that sent the commuters), these people will be gone (and might even cause a population drop). So don't murder your sims by forgetting to save them :P

The commuter system is interesting, because sometimes you might chain 5 or 6 cities, and see some sims cross all of them looking for a job.

Finally, this system has a serious bug: since the pathfinding is only calculated for the city currently loaded, you might cause traffic loops that will cause problems, suppose city A, B, C and D are connect in a square shape.

You play A, commuters are sent to B and D.

You save the game, like I said earlier, it will save A, B and D.

You load B, and you can use "route query" tool to find A citizens "living" in city B roads, they will look for jobs, and might decide that is best to go onward to C.

So when you save the game, you save A, B and C, with commuters from A now on C, and B having the path between the two saved.

You then load C.

Commuters don't ind what they want, and decide they will go to D.

Same thing.

Load D... commuters from A, STILL don't found what they want, and decides to continue their path forward, but "forward" this time means A again.


Now you load A.

A, had the commuters saved leaving, and pathing on C, to D (this triggered by saving the city B), and now it has those same commuters, saved entering again from D.

the thing is, the game don't know they are the same people, because city C is not loaded now, only A, B and D, so the game think A has commuters going to B, and thinks D citizens are incoming into A...

Since those commters left A in first place, they probably still won't find what they want, (if they had what they wanted they would not have left A), and will try again, by going to B again.

Result: if you keep loading and saving this chain A, B, C, D, you will eventually end with millions of commuters trying to find jobs, that were "duplicated" by the save game system.

So in short, no RCI is not region-wide, it is dictated by the commuters, and DON'T make loops, otherwise you WILL break your region.