Blocks count proportional to their difficulty, i.e. the fraction of the target they had to beat - not the actual fraction of it they reached.
There is no way to have a better solution for a given block when one is already created, as the difficulty is fixed.
Only when doing a multi-block attack crossing a retarget boundary (height multiple of 2016), one can influence the effect of the retarget, and thereby the difficulty.
Hmmm, okay I must not understand the orphanning process can you elaborate on that?
How does a block get orphaned if there is no such thing as a "better" solution?