How your Colonization Score is Calculated
+1 for each Petty Criminal / Indentured Servant+2 for each Free Colonist
+4 for each Skilled Colonist
+5 for each Founding Father
+1 for every 1000 gold in your treasury (although the manual states 250 gold)
+1 for every liberty bell produced after foreign intervention (sounds like an excuse to drag out the war?)
+1 for each percentage point of rebel sentiment (maximum 100)
-(difficulty + 1) for each native settlement you destroy
The native penalty reflects morality, the greater difficulty of finding good sites where villages AREN'T and not getting the loot when you plunder them. You can capture treasure trains from another power while they're taking them back to port anyway. And if you wait long enough the Spanish will destroy all the villages anyway, they're very efficient even when you arm the natives.
You get a bonus for an early revolution. Independence before other powers:
- First: +100%
- Second: +50%
- Third: +25%
Also the higher the difficulty level the greater your precentage. Score in points is constant regardless of the about factors, the percentage score is a modifcation to allow you to compare games played at different levels + how soon you become independent.
The following things DO effect your Colonization Score:
- Colonies destroyed by Indians or captured by Europeans. Because you loss Colonists.
- Training of colonists in a colony. Skilled Colonists are worth more points.
- Capturing enemy colonies. Because of the extra colonists and sons of liberty you get (or more likely loss).
- Disbanding Colonists.
- Disbanding one of your colonies.
- Accepting / Turning down tax hikes. Your reward is being able to continue trading in those goods, or not as the case may be. This doesn't effect SOL either although you would expect it too considering how much fuss is made about the Boston Tea Party. Incidentally the British Taxed tea was cheaper than the already available American stuff, a bunch of American Businessmen just made up a political excuse for what was an economic action - them losing trade! America has the motto of land of the free, I think a more appropriate one would be land of the not so expensive.