It's infinitely better to develop an excellent AI for a game than to focus on a pumped-up graphics capability and hope that it'll prop up the game by itself. I know that the AI is probably the most difficult game-aspect to program, but it's also the game-aspect that supports all the others and forms a foundation for everything else to rest and run on. Not even the best graphics in the world can do that in it's place.

So yes, AI should be of the highest priority for M2TW.