There's been two trains of thought about this mechanic so I did some testing and these are my results.

This is Turn 1 and a second screenshot to show you where the closest curiosities are located. The locations do not change if I reload the save.

steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2588975790

steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2588975849

When I enable Auto-Explore, on Turn 1, the scout will beeline it straight to the food no matter how many times I reload the save it will ALWAYS go straight for the food because it can't reach the science in a single turn due to the forests.

steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2588972729

For Turn 2 there was some RNG between tests. Sometimes a science curiosity will spawn in between the original 2 at one of two locations (more often than not it's A.) I circled the spawns in the second screenshot below. After grabbing this spawn the scout proceeds to the science to the right as expected but is exhausted before it can get there.

steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2587860689

steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2588973177

On turn 3 it will go straight to the science curiosity... shocker. Another RNG spawn lies to the south but the scout is exhausted again.

steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2588973463

This leads many to believe that the Auto-Explore pathfinding "cheats" by ignoring the Fog of War, and they're not wrong to assume this, I certainly did. However, I noticed some odd inconsistencies with this assumption in mind which lead me run these tests. Multiple sequences were tested and it wasn't long before one scenario tripped my confirmation bias.

Watch what happens if I manually move 1 tile to the Northeast, then enable auto-explore on Turn 1.

steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2588973709

steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2588973847

Why did the scout run to the B spawner?

This is the tile that reveals the science. So why does the scout go north from here to a tile with an empty RNG spawn?

steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2588893022

Well, if you look closely both spawns aren't equidistant, B is closer. I think Auto-Explore is simply choosing the closest spawn. Otherwise the scout should have gone to the right towards the science no? Either right of the horses or right into the desert both would land the scout adjacent to it. Another thing worth noting here is vision. I suspect the scout relies on vision to make these judgement calls. It doesn't move from A to B in screenshot #5. It moved south onto the horses. Possibly due to the fact that when it grabbed A it revealed B and can see that B is empty.

The AI clearly knows exactly where all these curiosity spawns are and appears to prioritize the closest one. Which is probably why scouts don't actually explore and just bounce between curiosities. However, this does not necessarily mean that a curiosity has actually spawned there or that AI can see through FoW. For further proof of this theory I submit one more screenshot, but first I want to elaborate about vision a little. If simply having vision of a tile disables its spawner, or removes it from a list of "viable targets" for auto-explore because it's empty, it would explain most of the behaviors we see. Particularly as your empire expands and curiosities dry up. We've all probably witnessed scouts that can't yet embark completely lose their minds when it can't find / get to a curiosity. The feature breaks.

Now, onto that screenshot I mentioned.

I tried the FoW mod on this save. The original 2 curiosities are still there because I created the map without the mod. For those unaware, if you use this mod curiosities don't spawn. This combined with mid-to-late game observations is what leads me to believe curiosities only spawn in areas that empires don't have vision.

Anyway, I performed the exact same move with this mod enabled. Move NE 1 tile then auto-explore and the scout ran for the food. steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2588979143

Well, that's something... They certainly prioritized the food when they could see it, but not when they couldn't? That's not what should happen if this feature "cheats."

Now, you could argue that this still counts as cheating and that's valid. The AI clearly has information that you're not privy to. I would argue that it's not cheating. The game needs some information for this feature to exist and function. It doesn't need to know everything though. Just the available spawn locations.

Here is the save in case you want to replicate this behavior yourself: 

www.dropbox.com/s/4vlvs4w5a6vvk1t/Nomadic%20Tribe%20Turn%201.ctr?dl=0#

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.

Sorry, to clarify: When I referred to the AI I meant pathfinding. I figured that it could be used synonymously in this context because you're letting the game make the decisions for you. The argument that many have made (perhaps not on these forums) is that pathfinding is cheating. That it knows exactly where and when a curiosity has spawned. It has knowledge that you do not and therefor is meta. Simply knowing where spawns are possible gives the feature an advantage over manual exploration, but not as big of an advantage as many would like to believe.

It's targeting empty spawns and wasting moves. Hence the infamous U-Turn.

globule wrote:

Oh, ok. Well, if you call that "sense food", it become a feature/skill!

Exactly xD

I think the misconception stems from people having previous experience with similar, but very different, features in other 4X games. It's been a while, so feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but in the recent Civ games the auto-explore prioritizes unveiling the fog no? Well, it makes sense in HK for scouts to maintain a list of [possibleCuriositySpawns] because curiosities are such an integral part of the game. The entire neo era revolves around them! Honestly, props to the devs! It's more work to make FoW influence pathfinding the usual shortcut is to "cheat," but the devs found a happy middleground ground here.