Ghoul and zombie battles are also especially boring because the company is always scattered randomly around the bottom-left of the field at the start, and the ghouls and zombies just gradually appear in ones and twos, so that the tedium is even more prolonged (and the assurance of victory even greater). Even bandit battles in graveyards tend to be like this. At least direwolves always charge straight into you en masse at the start, and are a good challenge in the earlier game.
And yes, initiative is especially useless now that guys with high max fatigue and lots of heavy stuff can use Adrenaline to go first when they want to. It would make sense if every character always had a portion of their initiative (say 5-10%) added to their base melee and ranged defence, and if the Dodge perk enhanced this and didn’t disappear as soon as you receive a miniscule scratch.