At the end of a combat report, it would be nice if there was a summary of the fight. I have been doing this by hand lately for all of the notable fights I get reports for. The key things that I include are:
A) Wounded nobles grouped by side (attacker vs defender, I don't break them down by realm) and sorted by importance. For example, a wounded king is listed before a wounded lord, etc. This lets everyone know (I send the results to the realm) how many nobles were wounded on each side without sifting through the whole report, as well as making it easy to see anyone of import that was struck down.
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Attacking nobility casualties:
Drake Dragon Master (Knight of Leohampton, Minas Ithil) has been wounded by Elite Guard
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Defending nobility casualties:
<none reported>
B) The total number of casualties (peasants) on each side for each round and a sum total and loss ratio at the end. Similar to this:
Casualties:
Round 1 casualties: 9 attackers, 26 defenders
Round 2 casualties: 3 attackers, 23 defenders
Overall casualties: 12 attackers, 49 defenders (1:4)
These numbers have given us a much better sense of how well one side did over the other. It has brought into sharp contrast the benefits of higher quality units during our extended wars, for example.
People have complimented me on having these summaries because they don't always have time to dig into each report.
1. What is the root problem I am trying to fix and/or What is the root benefit I am trying to achieve? (i.e. asking to increase the rate at which people lose positions from wounds is probably at root a request to increase turnover)
In this case, the root benefit (no real problems here) is to save everyone time and give them a simpler way to digest the big fights. It's a relatively simple piece of code, assuming you have access to the fight data.
2. Is this the smallest/simplest/least disruptive change to the overall game I can think of to accomplish my goal? (i.e. changing the percentage that you lose your position is a lot easier than an entirely new system of Council positions that takes into account realm conditions to provide the maximum number of people with positions)
The smallest approach would be to add this summary at the end of the battle report, near the personal summary. A more complex approach could include more statistics and/or something like an automated calculation of who earned the most battle honors (derived from how many enemies you wounded and a count of peasants killed)(perhaps allow the General/Marshals to bestow honors based on those numbers?)
3. Does this issue reflect a local (i.e. one realm/religion/island/region/whatever) problem or a game-wide state of affairs?
This reflects a game-wide state of affairs. Mostly it is a means to bring the key elements of a large battle into focus for someone who isn't interested in sifting through the whole report.
Cons that I can think of include:
A) A longer battle report (they're often long already)
B) It would encourage people to not always dig into the details of the battle reports. Is this a problem? I'm not sure.
Thank you for your consideration and building such a great game.