Factors that Affect Your Final Score

• Population (most important): One happy citizen is worth 2 points, while one content citizen only worth 1 point and angry citizens are worth nothing (I think).

• Difficulty Level: On Emperor level, 3000 points is about 300% and 4578 points is about 458%. If you play on a lower level, you will get a percent lower than 300% if your score is 3000; if you play on Deity, then you'll get higher than 300% for 3000 points.

• Barbarian Activity Level: Villages Only (-50 points), Roving Bands (-25 points), Restless Tribes (+0 points), Raging Hordes (+25 points).

• Spaceship: You can get up to 400 points with spaceship.

• Peace: I think one term of COMPLETE PEACE (means you have a peace treaty with ALL other civs) is worth 3 points. This means diplomatic relation with all other civs is a prerequisite and you will not earn Peace score until you do.

• Pollution: Each polluted square lowers your score by 10 points.

• Achievements: Each Wonder of the World is worth 20 points.If you have all 28 Wonders, you'll get 560 points.

• Future Technology: You get 5 points per future tech.

• Game Time: Game time does not add points to your score. Your quickness and efficiency can get up to 2000 points, which is compared to your running score and you get the higher of the 2.

These are basically all the factors I can think of... correct me if I am wrong. Thanks to MasterBob for pointing out a few errors in the original version of this mini-FAQ.