As a matter of fact, the most successful voting bots by curation rewards are the ones voting on new, fresh content. They are successful because there are curation guilds following up their votes. I'd guide you to research on @biophil's bot - he has the most successful curation bot running on Steemit and has several clients (and stalkers) that follow it. So, the reward system does actively incentivize what you are looking for, and to suggest that it encourages bandwagon voting is mistaken.
That said, if there were no curation guilds like Steem Guild, Steem Trail or Curie, these curation bots would not succeed and it'd go back to bandwagon voting.