It's possible that the initial behaviour was a bug but it's worth looking at how fixing it impacts the core gameplay loop.
E.g. I've recruited a number of elite units into my party which means that I musn't autoresolve any battle ever again because doing so would risk getting my elites nuked. So now I'm resolving each battle manually which works great in the sense that none of my troops even get touched but all or almost all the kills are scored by said elite units which stops me from levelling regular troops.
Imo they either need to make the lvl 25 Leadership perk worth a damn or revert the looter change. Honestly I just want the Training skill from Warband back.