3 is more like "attack, parry, attack", but you're thematically correct.
I'm very well into the game, and I still forget that point from time to time. Just yesterday I was doing pretty poorly and down to my last drink against Vilehand, when I just went "screw this, if I'm going to die anyway, I'm going to try a riposte for every parry". Totally turned the battle upside down.
It's really ingrained in us as players to wait for "proper openings", and it's not from just FromSoft games. It's pretty clever to go almost defiantly against that general rule.
As people said above, just get 6. 6 picks it up almost where 5 and all of its expansions dropped it, and it has some improvements as well, like the handling of districts and wonders as already mentioned. If you can get a good discount, try to eventually get the expansions as well. They are pretty good.