non-Macedonian style Phalanx - broken?

[vollorix]

@SFraser: maybe i´m kind of blind, i can see all the units with sword/spear combination switching to their secondary and not primary weapon when beeing knocked down ( they fight with spears instead of swords in melee ). There are also some other problems i´ve noticed:
1. you can force those units to switch back to swords for a while ( using the trick you described above, or puting them in guard mod for a second, then releasing them ), but after a while they do not react any more; once a unit is heavily depleted and exausted, the soldiers won´t fight with swords, but with spears only...
2. the entire unit, except from the front line, is using swords, but all the soldiers in the first rank are using spears, since they have been knocked down during the fight, while the others weren´t.

The only solution that comes to my mind is to give those units ( which are mostly elite anyway ), a rediculous high defence skill to make it very hard to get knocked down; right now i´m experimenting with EDU changing their recruitment time up to 4 turns - that way the AI won´t mass crank them, i hope.

EDIT: could one attach a different sceleton to all the units using the sword/spear combination, for example that of druids/cardinau orca, but keep their appearance on the battlefield? And if yes, is it enough to do the changes in the EDU + dmb?