Formations Bug or Just Me?

I was wondering if anyone else has encountered this pesky little bug.  I am playing as freelancer in a king's army.

I am playing with formations turned on.  At the start of each battle, both friendly and enemy AI armies are arranged in a deep rectangular formation resembling a deep shieldwall.  This is OK with me.  I kind of like it, kind of dislike it. 

However, when the AI army loses too many men, it ceases to form up in the rectangle at the start of the next round.  Instead they line up in an extended line/no formation.

I notice that this makes future battles very unfair.  As the friendly AI advances in a rectangle, they get near the enemy position and the enemy charges and totally encircles the rectangle since they are not in formation.  This almost always causes the friendly army to rout since they are surrounded! 

I don't have any screenshots at the moment, so you'll just have to picture the battle of Cannae or something like it.  This formations "bug" makes playing as a freelancer very unenjoyable since the friendly AI are too stupid to counter the formationless enemy army.  I can issue orders as a commander to counter the open formation of the enemy but the friendly AI seems incapable of doing this.

Has anyone else figured out a fix to this dilemma?

Kill couple of enemies before your rectangle is close to enemy and they charge hitting mostly the front of friendly formation.

tell your units to charge then have them reform, and they too will be a line in my experience.  Should help when that happens at least.

Or you could turn formations off.  I think it's a bad feature in general, as the combat mechanics in the mod do not support such a formation, to be beneficial in any way except against cavalry, and even then you could always just tell your troops to form 5 rows and to stand closer to each other.  works just as well.  The spears are simply way too long to be anything but a detriment generally when a formation encounters other infantry, specifically when they're not in formation, and surround.