Extenics is a new subject to solve the contradictory problems. It studies the extensive possibility of things and the rules and methods of exploitation and innovation with formalized model. In recent years, Extenics, combed with other related fields, has produced the Extenics engineering theory and methods for information, con-trol, evaluation, management and cognitive science, and also a series of theoretical finding and application results. Therefore, Extenics can be applied in the evaluation domain because of its properties of quantitative description of the variability about things. Because of the different run tasks, functions and subordinate relationships between up-stream to downstream, there are no the balanced interests related to the reservoirs along the Yellow River during the actual operation process. Aiming at this issue, many scholars have used the optimization and simulation models to study compensation benefits of the reservoirs along the Yellow River by considering comprehensively the power sup-ply, water supply and flood control, and many distribution solutions have been gotten. How to evaluate the various distribution programs of compensation benefits is a practical problem that needs to be solved urgently, not only di-rectly related to implementing the programs, but also related to promoting the water regulation program of the Yellow River. In this paper, a case study on the compensation benefits of the reservoirs along the Yellow River is carried out. Based on the Extenics and the substance-element analysis, a multi-index extension evaluation model and its index system is developed, the various levels of the classical field, controlled field and substance element needing to be evaluated are determined, the game theory is used to calculate the weights of evaluation indexes. The results are compared with those of the AHP and catastrophe evaluation. On which six distribution programs of the compensation benefits of reservoirs along the Yellow River are analyzed, calculated and evaluated, and the optimal program is selected. The results show that, compared with the traditional methods, such as AHP, catastrophe eval-uation method, comprehensive index method, fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method and principal component a-nalysis, the extension evaluation method is recommend as the best program in the case of shortage of water. The re-sults meet the practical needs and the objective requirements. The method is reasonable, feasible and effective for solving the complex multi-index evaluation problems. In addition, the method has certain universality, can be not only used for evaluating reservoir compensation benefits, but can also be used for evaluating other multi-attribute decision fields.