Sure, there are work arounds to avoid being bitten by this - as you say, connect once, complete the turn in offline mode, and only _then_ connect once every order is exactly as you wish it to be. Or renaming the .2h file (talk about having to do things the hard way
).
The fact that people have to do this is a relatively small inconvenience, sure - not something worth yammering for a big fix.
Except that people can and do get burned by it, because the documentation and interface doesn't at all make it clear that this is what happens.
And that seems to cry for some improvement - if nothing else, something like Illwinter did when people are about to connect and overwrite a pretender:
"If you connect to the game server now, your turn/orders as saved to disk _now_ will be uploaded to the game and possibly used before you have a chance to modify them. If this is not what you wish, Cancel and finish your turn in offline mode."