Often it's not clear that you have exceeded the number of allowed spawns/events on a map. As a test try removing some of the other stuff and see if they spawn.
WN
Check out one of my most recent arcs:
457506 - A Very Special Episode - An abandoned TV, a missing kid's TV show host and more
416951 - The Ms. Manners Task Force - More wacky villains, Wannabes. things in poor taste
or one of my other arcs including two 2010 Player's Choice Winners and an2009 Official AE Awards Nominee for Best Original Story
I think if you haven't added the NPC chat channel to any of your tabs, their speech bubbles won't show up either. Check if you have that channel on one of your tabs.
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
I can see NPC dialog outside of the test mission, though.
Battles occupy only two types of spawns: the ally/rescue/escort/defendable spawns and the "any" spawns. Rather annoyingly this means that most maps will not allow nearly as many battles as regular boss spawns and if you have too many captives/allies on the map it will crowd out the battles as rescues appear to have precedence.
In my experience, battles appear to have the lowest precedence of any detail type and will be crowded out more often. This is likely due to them not being able to be marked as required, nor can they trigger a required detail (you'll see a circular dependence error).
The Battles are showing up now, thanks.
In test, I can't seem to get the 'Battle' events to show up, and no dialog that I put in appears to ever be spoken.
The mission in question that I'm currently working on is on Arachnos Set Medium Map 6 with the primary enemy group for the map being the 1-54 Arachnos.
It has several other events which work well (except for the lack of dialog)
Opening Battle (I wanted to put one battle in front, and more scattered throughout)
Between Custom Enemy Group and Arachnos
Patrol x2, Set to Rogue (Works correctly)
Custom Enemy Group
Battle x2
Custom Enemy Group v Arachnos
Boss 1, Optional, Flees, Middle, Set to Rogue
Boss 2, Optional, Doesn't Flee, Back, Set to Enemy
Ally, Required (Not required to keep alive), Front, Fight Defensively
Ambush (Tied to Opening Battle) Doesn't start because there is no Opening Battle
Ambush, as above, but with the other battles.
Collection, Required, Back