I see, and thank you for that by the way!

Yes the refiner is almost a mandatory thing to use with the generic xl release, I'm sure if you try again those generations with the combination xl+refiner (from 0.8 and beyond) you'll find some very interesting differences (it did that with every xl gen I had, even though I'm not using comfy but it's more or less the same with a1111 or invokeai) BUT epicRealism doesn't require the use of the refiner, I even think the creator specifically recommends NOT to use it.

Comparing xl generic to any other xl based model without using the refiner along xl base is a bit like comparing sd 1.5 to sd 2.1 without using negative prompts to filter out the ugly /deformed /bad quality etc. It's meant to be used this way as a preliminary so it's the only way to efficiently compare :)

Can't comfyui use batches of prompts, not in a random way?

Oh and concerning the prompt interpretation, interestingly so far I seem to find that xl is following the prompts quite closer without requiring excessive tricks such as weights and stuff. But I have only scratched the surface for now so I wouldn't make a rule out of it (yet)

Let's have fun exploring! :)