What I mean is this. As of right now, tactical battles are much better then they ever were but the player still has a significant advantage in that we can position our units to pretty much always get a first strike on the enemy because the enemy will always try to reach us and we can just sit in a certain spot knowing we will be able to get a first strike.

My suggestion is this. Have the AI prioritize having ranged units. If the ai has ranged units in their army (and I am not talking have them have a lot of ranged units) they can fire on us. So what you do is have the tactical AI know that when they have ranged units their melee units shouldn't move forward and should use their ranged units to whittle down our units. The strategy could change depending on what we have. If we have significant ranged units then the enemy AI might rush. This may very well force us to approach the enemy or be killed by ranged units and not moving. I am sure this could be tweaked but I hope I am sort of getting my point across.