[elmokki]

I'm not him but I can answer it too!

Sprites are (mostly) better but that's the only improvement. Combat looked a lot better in Dom3 with actual flying things and background and actual army positions (not AAA game level looks obviously, but better). Lastly it's completely due to game mechanics, but beautiful Dom3 maps are a lot more beautiful than CoE3 maps. That, however should not be a surprise to anyone. Of course a beautifully drawn freeform image looks better than tile based map.

Oh yeah, by the way, what's up with combat not being skippable before the combat window is already open? I'd much rather just get a list of "these battles happened, wanna look?" like Dominions 3.