it would be counted in the engagement metrics so it would still contribute toward your score, but if you don't leave a reply directly to a Curie upvoted post it won't count as much unfortunately because it wouldn't show up in the query I run to count # of posts commented on.

Let me think about this - there may be a way I can modify my query to capture an instance like that in the post count. It is just tricky because for the # of posts upvoted, I am querying based on the Curie upvote, which is only cast on the top level post. So the query looks for instances where the post you commented on has the @curie upvote. If you are replying to a comment, the comment you are replying to doesn't actually have the curie upvote.