I have found that if I choose Actions/Attack (or just hit 'A' on the keyboard) and left click a target, it will almost always give me a Battle option instead of that lousy auto-resolve that often happens if you just right click on a target.
Likewise, if you LEFT click on a hero next to your unit, you can click Actions and "Recruit" to recruit them. This works even if you're on a dreaded diagonal that, with right click, for some reason triggers an attack instead of recruit.
