Why is COE3 a better game than COE2?

[Wousides]

In CoE2 the "every units in the defending side always strikes first" system was giving very bad dynamics to a game based about battle and conquest.
As then to get the advantage in a battle it was better to not attack but wait to be attacked by the AI (because once the defending side finish the 1st turn of the battle, the attacker side is half destroyed before having attacked once)

The Dominions system battlewas infinitively better than the CoE2 one in that respect, as 1st strike was depending a lot on the location of an unit, its speed, and other kind of characteristic.