AI advance value

[Souron]

Does any one know if the AI will look beyond it's currently available techs to choose what to research, or will it only pick the highest AI value of all available techs?

In other words should the AI value of an advance incorporate some suggestion of what it leads to, or only incorporate merit the tech itself?

 

[kobayashi]

From my experience its only tech itself and nothing to do with what comes after it.

 

[Souron]

Is that in answer to the first question on the second? Cause that answer has opposite implications depending on which you mean.

The reason I'm asking is in my scenario I have a number of linker techs, that have no worth themselves but lead to good techs. Will the AI pursue the good techs, if they must research the bad tech first, and the bad techs are given low AI values?

 

[Catfish]

I'm pretty sure he means the AI doesn't look ahead in the tree and only reads the AI values of the currently available techs. That's how I see it as well. I think Epoch also plays a part, with the AI giving priority to early techs. Easy enough to test, though. Give those bridging techs a high AI value and/or a lower Epoch value than other available, less important techs.