[God Emperor]

Baron, I think I see where you are coming from now.
In the changes, I have not significantly increased the number of "weapon" techs being researched early on. Apart from ensuring that follow on techs get researched within about five items of the theoretical science, I have moved shields up a little and added projectile weapons level 3 very early on.

To elaborate further, what I found was that the AI would research Physics say, but, would then wait 20+ techs in some cases before researching any of the follow on techs. A decision had to be made whether to push physics down a bit or to move shields etc up. I chose the latter in order to improve the AI's fighting ability early on and make the game tougher in the early stages. As you have pointed out, this is somewhat to the detriment of infrastructure techs. My belief, however, is that overall it does help the AI, as in most previous games I usually wiped out about 4 AI opponents by turn 40 and hit mega evil. In the revised Version I am battling to take out 2 AI opponents due to the damage that AI manages to inflict on my ships that are unshielded.
Note: I play tactical combat.

Tictoc: I must admit that I dont use AI controlled research, but, what techs did you research over 200 turns?

In my latest game, by turn 20 the AI players have researched around 4 - 6 techs each - eg the Klingons have Physics, Shields 1, Projectile Weapons 3, ie 4 techs. I am concerned that you only got 7 techs in 200 turns.

Did you have divide points evenly on? That would waste a lot of points as the Filler Techs are very cheap.
Note: the AI players default is not to divide points evenly so they dont have this problem, but, if you turned research over to the minister with Divide Points evenly left on (human default), you might encounter problems.
Be interested to get more info off of you. Perhaps you can upload a saved game for me to look at.

Regards,
God Emperor