Of course the CIV/SMAC battle "till the last men" must be changed into a model that manage "surrenders",
e.g. when attacker vs. defender has a force ratio 5/1 outside of a fort, or defending unit is completely surrounded and 3/1 low on force rating, etc.

BTW, we discussed about slavery and POW recently here , more in details here and also here .

I posted on these threads, too, but the relevancy (of course ) is because plenty of good idea come from other posters there.

Just summarizing a lot, I suggested to introduce:

quote: - Slave/PoW settler, when captured at the end of combat (immigrate/refugee settler into migration model) under control of warder Civ player - Special Worker Slave/Immigrate (when "assimilated" to a city) into common city screen - Ability to build Prison camp / Refugee camp by above special settler, instead of City (less management trouble) - A "runaway unit", very low level infantry or special settler that you can try to recover back to original Civ (PoW) or found a new, separate Civ (Slave)

Thiod doesn't mean all they must be implemented, but a few should without too much micromanagement.

You can set an option that either allows your men to be captured or to suicide - that way you have the best of both worlds. Or make the attack algorithm not quite so powerful if the attacker is attempting a "capture".

POW's are weaker than normal settler units but give them the ability to perform simple tasks (ie. build road...).

In this way once you have them you have a mass workforce.