Taken prisoner mechanic

[Zanzoken]

I like this mechanic for strategy or tactical games (like XCOM or JA2 as OP mentioned) where you control a lot of units. I would probably encourage this through mission design. Make a mission that's extremely difficult to get a perfect clear, but rewards partial success. Or come up with a narrative device where some troops have to be sacrificed in order to complete the mission. As a player you need a reason to press forward through the adverse setback, instead of just reloading a prior save.

However in single-player games like M&B and Outward, both of which I've played a lot of, I find this to be more of an annoyance than anything. It's a total negative that results in nothing except grinding to get back to where you were before being captured. You have to be really committed to ironman style play to not just reload and save yourself the effort.

 

[octavius]

Runestone (you have probably never heard of it).

 

[Zed]

Crusader Kings II

and III

It can sometimes mean game over, if the person imprisoning you are your liege and he has reason to revoke you titles (you belong to an evil religion, you're a deviant/fornicator, you're a murderer).

 

[JarlFrank]

Ultimate General: Civil War kind of. There are situations where units surrender instead of routing, like when they're surrounded or in a badly losing melee. It's rare, but it can happen.

When your unit surrenders, the enemy can control it as a prisoner unit and move it behind their lines. You can liberate them by moving a unit of your own into the captured guys.

As rarely as it happens, I think it's a great mechanic and exactly what Total War style battles needed to feel less like massacres towards the losing side.

You'd really like Hegemony III: Clash of the Ancients then. Routed units try to get back to their own territory, if your units are faster and catch up to them, they become slaves to work in your resource producing buildings (mines and so on), with a hit to faction relations. Usually only elites/super experienced units have high enough morale to get wiped out entirely before routing.

Sometimes they'll try to ransom them back, you can release them as a good will gesture, etc and sometimes they'll raid to free them. Needless to say the same can happen to your dudes.

Yeah Hegemony is a great series. Sad to see that the devs vanished, I was looking forward to their next DLC featuring the Nuraghic civilization.

 

[GrafvonMoltke]

Fallout New Vegas, if you have the right mods

 

[vota DC]

C&C Generals has a cut taking prisoners feature mentioned in some files if you mod the game. Chinese used some kind of rubber bullet, GLA darts while Usa had their flashbang grenades that stunned instead of being mass destruction weapons.