Is there a preferred way of winning?

[Pounder]

I was playing the Sword of the Shogun conquest.

I decided to be a war monger since a conquest victory was one of the ways to win.

I got rid off everyone with more than about 300 turns still left.
The Victory Stats showed that I had a score of 966, but when the score was entered in the hall of fame it was only 579. I thought that I would get a large bonus and that my score would be in the thousands.

Does anybody know how the scores are calculated.

Is the only way to get a better score in this Conquest to win by Diplomacy.

I would have gotten a much better score just leaving one town in the last Civ alive and waiting for the historical win.

 

[KingTux]

Yeah, I thought that that was the way to go, too. I'm not really that high of a scorer, but I think that Victory points might have nothing to do with your final score. Overall, I think that it's judged just like the epic game. Large amounts of culture, and the like might improve your score. The victory points, from how I've seen them work, are just a measure of progress and collecting the right amount of them (in this case, 10,000) will end your game prematurely. So, think of them as an extra victory condition.

If I'm wrong about this, I'd like to hear how these points actually affect your score.

 

[Pounder]

There were no victory points in this scenario, diplomacy was the alternate way to victory.

I won a conquest victory eliminating all 17 rival Civs with over 300 turns to go.

The score of 966 is the score on the victory staus screen, not vicyory points (as there were no victory points in this game).