Defense teams appear to show a different score than the same team shows when you are creating it. I remember this being fixed a long time ago in Adobe, so it must have been reintroduced when we ported to Unity. I can confirm I have also never seen a 10k+ score opponent (being above that since Merlantis, 150+ battler per week) and that the top scoring opponents I know have maxed skill bonuses are lower than they should be.
Team scores are hidden when you press the “Test Defense Team” button, but you can easily verify this by setting a defense, looking at the score, clicking on your profile (either via Rankings, or on the map screen) and choosing to “fight” yourself. The you team will have a different score.
Note that this is a different issue from the also persisting issue of the system displaying the score of your last team after you change a new one. To fix this, just battle the team at least once after setting it so you’ll see the correct score for that team.
After some testing with my accounts, I believe I’ve discovered the problem. Defense teams appear to be scored based on the Adobe formula, which gives score points for Guild skill bonuses from completed tasks (+160/task, but +180 for red), but not five star kingdoms, where everywhere else shows the team scores with the Unity formula which has no score given for unlocked guild skill bonuses, but the appropriate amount given for five star (+40 points per kingdom). My low level account has four five star kingdoms and no guild skill bonuses, and defense teams are showing 160 points lower on defense (40 less points for each five star kingdom). My high level has 30 five star kingdoms and all guild statues unlocked and is showing 220 points lower on defense (180 + 160 * 5 - 30 * 40 = -220). My friend’s mid level account with fully unlocked guild bonuses but only 13 five stars kingdoms was showing 460 higher score on defense (180 + 160 * 5 - 13 * 40 = +460).
I guess this explains why attempting to gather data for matchmaking based on scores no longer made sense when we moved to Unity. Who knows what score they are using for matchmaking, or gold calcs for that matter.