My suggestion is to create a new game option where the first player is not allowed to attack in the first round but just deploy and reinforce.
I organised a tournament with random map, sunny and escalating in 1 v 1 games that resulted in 58.67% of the games won by the first player (68 out of 120).
https://www.conquerclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=216271
This means that the first player still appears to have a slight advantage but it much equals chances.
This option would also be useful for fog games where it is sometimes difficult to monitor when the game starts.
My suggestion is that it could be an additional game option (as trench or fog)
