Well, I guess I see the game as a challenge to keep a functioning, profitable Mercenary band going. In “real life”, I wouldn’t know traits like bleeder, coward, etc. until actual combat. I could get a rough idea of basic skills, which I can get just by the social class … beggars would probably not make good mercs. How loyal, how resolute a brother is is not something one can find out until the moment of truth. It’s rather like hiring a new employee. They may have a great resume, but they might not be right for the job.
I’m not sure how trivial a “show / don’t show stats” option would be to code, but it would have to be real easy for me to want time diverted for that rather than used for bug squashing and progress in getting the game to completion.
I’m not saying I don’t understand what you’re getting at. I’ve certainly had games where the recruits were so bad, I ran out of funds and got killed off trying to make money to replace them. I definitely would have liked a “preview stats” option then!
I hope you can get around the drawbacks, or that it fits in the game design to have the enable/disable option put in.
In a single player game, there's no such thing as cheating. It's merely "creative manipulation of the default settings"!