Miniphracts setup
So far I've also done a writeup of my first game and how I did operations. You probably also might be interested in Sam Sorensen's blog posts on the original Cataphracts game.
I'm starting the third game today, and I was going to write up the last game, and evidently I haven't finished, but I did realize I should do how I set up my games as a separate blog post.
Difference vs larger games
My knowledge of larger games almost entirely comes from spectating one. I've also played in some very large games, but that gives a pretty narrow window on what the game looks like. So I'd be interested to hear how much people agree.
The big difference with a larger game with lots of players and a big map is there are a very large number of fairly routine things happening, every day. Most setups for these games focus on making these routine things more efficient. Sending mail, for instance, becomes a lot more overhead in a larger game. Also, some things that happen occasionally in a small game (such as foraging) will happen more often with more players, and thus become more work.
With a small, short game, the main problem I find I have is that everyone is on top of each other all the time and it's very easy to get confused. It can happen, for instance, that one third of all your players are in one single battle, which should never happen in a more standard sized game. Most of my setup is about not getting confused, and being able to undo things if I mess up because I'm confused.
The really big thing I would recommend is scheduling time to figure out what makes you confused and how to address that. I would recommend starting shortly before a weekend where you don't have a lot going on, so you have time to adjust your setup on day 2-3. I've also done a "long day 1", where I give the starting players their armies and all the information and then they have a lot of time to ask questions and for me to realize anything I might have overlooked.
Spreadsheets
I don't use any discord bots because I have a vague feeling that the amount of effort to set them up is not outweighed by the amount of work they would save in such a small game. Part of this is also that even contemplating learning about how the discord API works makes me immediately feel tired. It's probably worth it in a larger game.
I did spend a lot of time polishing my google sheets, though.
Aside from the commander sheets, the big one I have is one to globally manage supply. It has one tab for each commander. Each day has a column for supply in, out, daily supply consumption, loot in, loot out, the action taken, and notes. This makes it easy to track anything, go back and fix any mistakes, and make sure I am updating each commander every day. A summary tab at the front lets me see at a glance which commanders I've processed that day. If there's a garrison in a stronghold that needs feeding, I make a tab for it as well.
I also have a template for commander sheets. It connects to that summary sheet. I've added in per detachment morale, per detachment noncombatants, and carried loot (as of this upcoming game). I have my own custom rules for ships so you can ignore that. The major new addition, which I think most people do in some form, is a separate tab for calculating army strength. I have three scenarios: normal, assaults, and whenever any special detachment rules might apply.
Discord
Letters get forwarded into a thread. There was still a bit more friction here than I'd like - maybe in the future I'll have one thread per day and forward them onto the next day. However, at the scale I was operating I could eyeball it 99% of the time. In the first miniphracts, letters were messengers on a map. It got a bit confusing, but I might do that again for the next game as I'm trying new things with messengers.
Because I'm running several games in this server and the games are short, for organization I have one thread per commander in the commander channel and one thread per parley in the parley channel. I also have a channel for ref notes, a channel for news and weather, and a channel for administrative announcements. In the end I added a debrief channel.
This time around I'm adding a channel for spectators and a channel for the game timeline, separate from the ref notes.
The map
I started by hand drawing a map, then made it in HexKit, then added annotations in affinity, then imported it into Foundry. I made a lot of use of "outdoor walls" to handle terrain blocking the view - I do more of this than I've seen in most games. It probably isn't worth it on a large map, but on a small map it lets you have things close together while somewhat reducing the number of interactions.
The big thing I added for the second game is a macro to change the vision radius.
Points of friction
The biggest point of friction at the moment is transferring detachments between sheets. Copy pasting between sheets doesn't work that well. The way I think other people have handled this is to have one giant GM sheet and have player sheets import that. I'm not yet quite annoyed at the process to figure it out.
The other big one is, as I mentioned, there just sometimes being too many things happening at once. I'm trying a slightly larger map this time to see how it improves things.