Good scouting can give you a lot of important information about what your opponent is doing and the score can too. If you know how to read it that is. This is how scoring works as best as I can understand it. I hope it is of some use to you.
You may have noticed in the postgame you can choose to view not just the total score but the military and economic scores separately. The distinction between the two is what makes paying close attention to the score worthwhile. Military and Economic scores are calculated exactly the same way the total score is, just split into two categories. Players essentially get one point for every 100 resources in the stockpile or invested in econ (villagers, buildings and techs). Military works the same way. The cost of all military units, buildings and technologies makes up the military score. Not sure what’s what? The minimap filters use the same categories as the score. The option to display the scores separately was taken out a few patches back as a design decision by ensemble. So you can’t tell how much of the total score is military anymore. Instead the thing to watch for is fluctuations in score. You cannot tell if someone has started to age up based on their econ score. The resources have simply been reinvested and are still counted as part of the score. However, military units and technologies do not appear to count until they are finished being created or researched. Military buildings still show up as part of the military score as soon as the amount is deducted from the econ score. Thus you can tell when someone has decided to spend a lot on military. The scores types for all units and techs can be seen in the proto and techtree files. Native trading posts are counted as econ, not military. Don’t expect to be able to tell the difference between a fast fortress and a native rush by looking at the score. There is still no substitute for scouting. Wagons do not count until the foundation is placed. Forts are worth 11. The score doesn’t refresh at a super fast rate so some things can be a bit deceiving. Gather resources from crates can offset some of the drop. A large seven point gain is likely to be a military shipment arriving but maybe all the vills went for the crates. [This message has been edited by Flammifer (edited 05-19-2006 @ 04:28 PM).]
Essentially the score is the value of what the player currently has. That means resources in the stockpiles as well as the buildings, units and technologies. In the post game this is shown as one point for every unit of resource. During the game the ones and tens places get truncated. Units or buildings that are killed or destroyed no longer count towards a player’s score.
Econ score does not include extra econ score for trading posts that are set to gather resources. Depending on the map they can easily be counted as 10 points.
Combine scouting and deck checking with frequent glances at the score and you’ll be able to tell a lot. An easy and helpful one is if another wave is going to be coming at your town or your opponent has decided to save up for advancing. But by far the most important is the indication of a military building right after reaching colonial. It’s a dead giveaway most of the time to see the score drop just and then go down again 20-30 seconds later. As this is the result of a military building being built and then units being queued once it is completed.