I think your answer is found more in the AI. Any gains from pruning unlikely/impossible scenarios are usually spent on greater search depth*, and late game scen

I think your answer is found more in the AI. Any gains from pruning unlikely/impossible scenarios are usually spent on greater search depth*, and late game scenarios tend to have 1) more units in play and 2) higher stakes on a single move. Pre-computing during your turn would actually result in more compute, because the optimal choice for the AI after Unit A moves may change drastically once you've moved Unit B. [*]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha-beta_pruning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha-beta_pruning.