Idk, maybe you can tell me what I'm doing wrong. If you have low ini (i don't put any points into wits until main stat is maxed and I ignore vit completely) many of the enemies usually would get the first turn. I have picture of health on all my martial characters with warfare maxed, but a lot of encounters do a lot of alpha damage and enemies would usually not hesitate to use cc once your armor is down. Some are pretty close to oneshotting your guys even with level appropriate armor, e.g. Alice Alison. Maybe we can argue on definition of cheesing, but prebuffing with living on the edge(or really any form of prebuffing) or skipping pre combat dialogue to attack enemies from very favourable position or splitting them with teleport as combat initiator constitutes to cheesing in my book.
It's not like I'm having any issues beating stuff, but going around naked would be pretty painful to me. Maybe you can enlighten me how you deal with enemies getting the first turn and immidiately CCing your guys with battlestomp etc through their crap armor.
Initiative works in a round robin system, i.e. enemy#1, you#1, enemy#2, you#2, etc. Having high Initiative means that you get to go first, but in the worst case scenario you will still go second at worst. Sure, there are some fights in which one of your dudes may get CC'd on turn 1 before they get to have a go, but these are few and far in between. Hardly game breaking or a major issue for concern. Furthermore, being CC'd is not the end of the world - you can still win the fight in spite of this and CC can also be removed thereby restoring your turn. Even if CC was such a major issue, it would most likely be an issue with encounter design, or with the dual armour system and how it interacts with CC. And not about having to go to vendors every level.
As for what you are doing wrong - as you identified yourself, you are ignoring Constitution completely. Surely you realise that going full glass cannon at the expense of survivability has repercussions? You cannot expect to go balls out full damage and then whine about enemies killing you when they hit back? Stat distribution is a metagame for a reason. This isn't an issue about vendoring for gear - this is an issue about you not building your characters properly.
Alice Aliceson is not a good example - it is an atypical fight by any standard (as well as being completely optional). The cheeses you refer to - I don't use them.
And, finally, you admit that you really are not having a hard time beating the encounters. Why is it then that you feel the "need to update gear at least every other level to keep up" if you're not struggling?
I'm sorry, I don't want to come off as a dick, but I have seen many people voice similar concerns and these are just completely unfounded. You can beat the game on Tactician easy peasy without ever visiting a vendor. Yes, vendoring makes things easier, but that is the beauty in having options. If vendors did not have good gear - what would the point of having a currency be?
