Just to throw a little more to think of in this
I've seen a similar situation in several of my games while working on AI's.
Early in the game, I had a few frigates and a stack of sats defending my side of a warp point, with about a dozen lightly defended planets and a home world in that system and the adjacent one. I was attacked by a fleet of about 15 destroyers which I didn't have a chance of destroying with the forces I had available in the area. Resorting to cheesy tactics and using tactical combat, I attempted to damage or cripple as many of the enemy ships as possible, taking advantage of the AI's tendancy to retreat all damaged ships back to the nearest ship yard for repair. I was able to destroy 7 ships, and damage 6 others to some extent. However, instead of returning the ships for repair, the AI proceded to send the two undamaged ships into the adjacent system, and glassed the one breathable planet in the system other than my homeworld (assumed this was due to that being the only planet colonized other than my homeworld the Last time they had a ship in the system), while the 6 damaged ships (one of which only had 1 engine, 1 DUC 5, and 1 CSM 3) each proceeded to attack separate planets that they were capable of reaching durring the AI's move, glassing all 6. The next turn, the AI sent its three most damaged ships back for repair, while the other three proceeded to glass the remaining planet in the initial system, and two planets with minimal defenses that were within range in the adjacent system (bypassing the homeworld which was the closest planet to the warp point). Meanwhile, the two undamaged ships, instead of glassing any of the other planets in the system, chased down and destroyed the colony ship that I had sent out from my home world durring my turn, followed by a second colony ship the turn after, placing the two undamaged ships 4 systems from thier closest colony. The odd coincidence in this (which I have also seen with drones) is that in the strategy used by the enemy fleet, colony ships were one of the top target type priorities (use target type first was set to false).
My point in all of that is that I am wondering if the strategies used also have an effect on determining the AI's target selection outside of combat.