I'm not sure if it's possible with a single unit. The only way i've found is to make a group of more than one unit before attacking, just adding a single peasant to your army should do the trick.

Think of fleets in galciv 2, if you had a fleet you could watch the fire fight, but if you had lone ships it was all played out on the main map. It's much the same concept here.

Pretty late when I tried my first game but fairly confident that after changing the tactical battle cutoff slider to 0, I could enter tactical battles with my Sovereign alone.

He didn't fare very well mind you, but it was possible.

Thanks everyone. It is called Tact-battle trashold.

Just saving real estate space on the screen I suppose.

Makes it a bit confusing though.