I disagree. Acting more is very different than moving further. When a unit can act more than another unit it means it can position itself more often thus dodging more attacks. Initiative acts as either a movement bonus or an offensive bonus or a defensive bonus - player's choice: thus more strategy involved. Combine it with smart tweaking of the movement length and you have units playing very differently one from another.I don't think it's that brilliant. The creature is either fast of slow. If the creature is (for example) slow, but makes more moves than opponent (your "Extremely Positional dependant unit") - it is just self-contradicting description. If it's fast - it goes further and/or strikes more often.
Think of the comparison of Blood Furies in H5 with Harpies in H3. Both had the same mechanic no-retaliation, strike and return. But because Blood Furies were able to reposition themselves much faster than low-init units it came up to the point where you could kill huge amounts of slow units like zombies by just dancing around them. And that was very fun. Try doing the same with Harpies in H3 and you wont succeed.
Again I'm not sure I agree. Of course 1 sprite vs Hydras could be seen as an abuse but then again, in H4 units were rarely alone or very rarely split themselves in stacks of one.One more thought. A situation when one fast unit can kill many slow units without a scratch (like 1 sprite against 1000 Hydras in H4) is just a BAD design. You have to avoid things like that at all cost. The should be no such things, even with help from magic hero. But with your idea above this will happen far too often.
First of all this type of thing makes creeping very fun: kill a lot with very little.
Second it emphasizes the need of synergy between units or hero spells and units. Hydras were sluggish slow units: add in Teleport and you have a beast on your hands. Again the perk Teleport Attack from H5 was awesome at this (and it played on the Initiative System - see how this thing has so much potential)
Third this will add choice to army composition: do you want fast and fragile units or slow powerhouses. Maneuver units or Tanks? I think it has very much potential if balanced right.
And about your 1 sprite against 1000Hydras it was never really viable... I mean, 1 morale boost and your hero is dead... really doubt it ever broke a game, except maybe single player with lots of reloading which is never really that important.
We'll just have to wait and see. To me the worst problem with non-random choice is the fact that there will always be best picks at each level all leading to the fact that every level 10 hero of one class will always look the exact same way.H4 had just the right degree of randomness. You get semi-random (not just random!) choices, but you choose the skills to upgrade yourself. Degree of randomness can be tuned by offering 2 or 4 choices instead of 3, but the system is just right. The H6 idea of removing randomness out of the hero development tree is soooo wrong!
If multiple relevant choices are added it could be a valid solution to adapting strategy in function of the map, and maybe could lead to a better balance of the game (no more rng losses like in H5)
I agree, H4 was the best in this regard. However the perks were sometimes boring (like more mana, or more efficiency for spells schools that had very few power dependent spells to begin with - like Life and Order Magic) and RNG did play a bad part sometimes :
- for example being offered Charm, Summoning and Basic Combat to my Nature-Order Magic Hero when all I really want is to level up my magics so I can get new spells;
- or being spammed with Seamanship when all I want to get is that Expert Stealth to start stealing artifacts and leech Stealth Experience. Huge difference btw from getting Expert Stealth at level 5 (think this is the earliest u can get it) as opposed to level 10 or so...
To Sabertooth Cat i have seen all 
