About that blind research prediction tool!

[binTravkin]

in fact I would guess it only looks at the very first level of techs you can get, rather than going into their successors

I think it's false. I've been looking at the values of techs at the same time as setting my priority but somehow I didn't so often get what was the most valuable tech in that priority at the moment..

[joncnunn]

The bigest thing I noticed with Blind Research on are that baring constant switching of priorities every time a tech is reserached, the tech research is diffused across the tech chart. And even with constant switching, you'll still more likely to get a bypassed tech lower in the tech tree in the same category as the one your wanting.

A related thing I noticed is that going up almost any path has obsticals that are hard to get around without changing the resarch priorities.

[Ka Plewy]

The bigest thing I noticed with Blind Research on are that baring constant switching of priorities every time a tech is reserached, the tech research is diffused across the tech chart.

You can't just switch from one priority to another. Often times the most effective is combining priorities, because the techs you want are usually governed by multiple priorities (see alpha.txt power, tech, wealth, growth columns for the techs). One will always be primary, true, but a lot of other available techs might have that as primary. Combining priorities, along with knowing where you're at in the tech-tree allows for some pretty powerful semi-direct research with nearly the degree of control of directed research.
All of my evidence is anecdotal, but combining priorities, along with knowing where I'm at, and what's available (thanks to the spreadsheet), I can generally get what I want 90% of the time in a blind research game.