At the start of the battle put your troops into the quinqux formation, then group all of those units together. You can now still select them seperatley and move them around during the battle but if you select the whole group and move them then they'll return to the starting formation. Plus it means the computer won't automatically spread them out in a line. I agree that it's a shame you have to do it at the start of very battle. I'm not one for formations anyway, I tend to charge first and think about what i'm doing later.