Why limit it just to battles? Watching the gameplay videos from Gamescom, the towns seem pretty dead. Hearing townspeople say the odd thing now and again could provide not only a bit of life to the towns, but they can passively inform the player about the state of the village itself. “you hear bandits attacked one of our caravans?” ”I’m ready for this miserable war to be over” ”Lord or not, I really don’t see how that woman would want to marry him.”
hell, you could have vendors/shopkeepers yell out for customers. “Swords! Axes! Maces! If it can kill, then we sell it.”
then again, it’d probably be a nightmare doing that, recording all those lines for all those factions