I have not looked for a week, but the last time I checked, I was number nine on the Metavesre ladder. I have played the game for well over 500 hours.
The details of the scoring system in GC III are still a (near complete) mystery to all players as evidenced by your post and the posts of many others. Stardock has never done much to clear up the mystery. I can offer clues, but still have no idea about the details.
I was somewhere in the top twenty in GC I. I did not crack the top 100 in GC II because I played an honest, un-modified game. By using custom races and opponents, it was easy to "game" GC II for huge scores. At least, I understood the scoring system.
Playing GC III, I won a diplomatic victory on insane level, on a huge map, with every one of the available major players set to godlike opponent skills, and with as many minor players as allowed, and won in about 90 turns....2 points!!!???
I played the insane-sized map campaign on normal. From a late-game save I tried out several different paths to a win, and never scored over 70 points.
Recently, I have followed the very well written "How to easily win a diplomatic victory on godlike level" strategy. You can find the info on a search of this site. The key components of this strategy allow you to expand rapidly and keep the other civilizations at bay using your diplomatic skills. You research deeply into the diplomatic areas before you do much of anything else. At the start, you have to design speedy, long-range colony ships as well one ship with a lot of sensors. The recent version of the game nerfs the sensor ship, but not enough that you cannot ignore the information the ship brings in.
Using this strategy, you can continue to build research planets and economy planets (along with your factory planets) and have little fear of being attacked, even though your military is weak. You will also have enough money to buy mercenary ships before the AI can buy these ships, especially at mid-game and late-game. The mercenary ships have HUGE benefits. Don't neglect them.
After playing several more games and reading more posts (as they rolled in this month) it seemed to me that the number one thing the scoring system looks at is your total strength, displayed at the top far right of the main game screen. That strength seems to be based on the strength of your combat ships. Your population size and economic credits seem give a very small boost to the score.
For several weeks, I have played the game using mostly huge universes, on the tough level. By mid-game, my diplomatic influence is so huge that I have no fear of being attacked. To gain $$$, I trade exploration and trade treaties every time they are available. The $$$ allow me to buy mercenary ships. As the game goes into the third stage, I expand the military skills. The first skills going into information invasion. One thing I NEVER do is to allow tech trading. On the tech tree, I always select research and morale bonuses when given the option and am WAY ahead of the AI by mid-game.
Don't forget to buff up planets with economic constructors and to send off constructors to bring in mining bases for the elements that help you purchase mercenary ships.
Once I have most of the war techs available, my factories begin to pump out ships that are ahead of the AI ships.
I often research the war techs to the very end. Once that is done, my warship abilities expand at a huge rate. I go from being the very weak military power to being the strongest in 30 turns or so as ships with Doom Rays, Max Photons, etc. arrive with over 1000 attack points per ship.
These strong attack ships, coupled with specially designed transports with extra speed modules, when properly planned, can take out an opponent in one turn.
Towards the end off the game, once I find that I have researched ALL available research, I delete all of the research tiles on each planet and change them to market and bank tiles. I need the $$$.
At this point, to gain a high score, I am "gamey" and I don't like that. I pump out as many strong offensive ships as I can. Some ships have over 2000 Doom Ray points, some have over 2000 Missile points, some have over 1000 Kinetic points. And I just keep pumping them out.
I hate doing this. The game is already more than won. I have a total strength of 50,000 points, then 100,000, and have gone as far as over 700,000 points. All I do is click-click-click. This click-click stuff has been addressed before. I have seen my point totals for winning a conquest game advance from 80 points to as far as 7000 points, just by clicking. This is not right. A quick, incisive victory should be rewarded. A game already won should not be rewarded by 10,000 additional clicks.
One thing that has to be noticed is that once you have your research maxed out, you have to work hard to build many, many economic planets and have to build many, many zeno farms and food distribution centers. 20 factories and five farms will produced very little. 6 farms around a distribution center and a few extra factories or merchant centers on the planet will rock. Most of your advanced planets need a distribution center with zeno farms around all six quadrants. It is hard to come to grips with this. Yet, I have have had planets with populations of over 150K and they pump out massive amounts of $$$, ships, morale, and influence and they have only a few tiles for this speciality...what they have is max population.
Using constructors, place three or four economic bases around each planet, maxed out with happiness, economics, research and manufacturing. This will add HUGE bonuses. The same can be said for mining bases. NEVER neglect what constructors can do.
At the late stage, you have to pump out $$$ as much as you have to pump out killer ships. I am always at $999,999 and the game will not allow me to go any higher. When the number of maxed out ships become huge...4000 or more, the support costs begin to drag down the the economy. Now, it is time time to take out the last opponent in a one-turn invasion.
Just before you do the final invasion, you should close out by finalizing the malevolent options by electing the top right option, going you state-of-the-art warships at every planet. This will increase your final score.
I use malevolent choices when offered, but I hate to be malevolent, I am a kind person and detest conflict. Sadly the game rewards the malevolent strategy.
All of my recent games have taken well over 20 hours to finish. Each game has been won well before 20 hours, but my score is low. To boost my score I just keep clicking. This is not right.
This is an ongoing problem and Stardock, to my knowledge, has not given any detailed information about their Metaverse scoring system.
