Yeah but why? Are units more balanced? One thing I've noticed about Civ 3 is the battles are all random. It was weird switching from the RTS genre to TBS. I expected units to be more statistical instead of dice rolls. The only other experience I have with this type of game is Romance of 3 Kingdoms which I played like 10 years ago and it confused me a ton.
You're describing the "wtf spearman beats tank" thing that happened far too often in early Civ games. I'm mostly familiar with it from Civ 3. Yeah, that got better over time. It's not what they mean when they say combat got better, though - combat just improved a good deal in every way between 4 and 5. 5 is the first game where combat is somewhat interesting TBH.