I tried the above advice and discovered the following:
Solitaire: When playing the scenario solitaire, the victory points are tabulated correctly.
High difficulty: There is no difference, either playing as Russia or Germany.
Poor play: I have tried to play as poorly as possible, but the AI immediately goes into negative points.
To reproduce:
- Start scenario 1, East Prussia Campaign 1914, as either Germany or Russia.
- Hit "Proceed to Next Turn" without giving any orders.
- Hit F9 to look at "Scores & Objectives." The enemy will now have a score in the negative hundreds.
This is the only scenario that I've played that has the automatically negative victory points.