I'm actually not sure whether your relations with the faction you work for actually do increase. There should be some incentive for all-round 'doing good'. I see a swadian caravan being atacked by steppe bandits. I check the bandits to see if they have any valuable prisoners, and if they don't i continue on my way. There is no incentive to save them from trouble unless you're after the 38 experience and gold you'll get if you escort them to the remote middle-of-bloody-nowhere destination to which they're headed.
It would be nice if general acts of do goodedness were recognised by your counts. For the above example, you could get a reward from the caravan master for each enemy your party actually killed, and also a +100 that covers instances where you wound enemies, de-horse them and in general provide meat shields.
But yeah, it would be nice if you could get recognition for killing a war party of 102.