Enemy Exchange Program: Difference between revisions

** The Expansion added the neutral Dark Ranger hero, who can permanently take control over a single enemy unit, abilities and all, every few minutes.

** Blood Elf Spell Breakers can convert summoned units.

** Additionally, the campaign editor lets you set any unit to "rescuable"—including units whose race doesn't match the player's (or you can cut to the chase and implement triggers that give players units of other races, either by spawning in additional units or changing control of existing ones). The first game, where Dark Archons weren't available, makes use of this in the official campaign. {{spoiler|In the final mission, you control two races at the same time.}}

** The Zerg get an aversion though: an infested command center is acquired by beating an enemy command center to the red, then getting a Queen unit to the building before it explodes. For your trouble you get an entirely different building that makes [[Action Bomb|Infested Terrans]], a unique unit which is also far different from what a Command Center usually produces.

* In ''[[Total Annihilation]]'' both commander units can capture enemy units, including construction units. Core has a resurrection unit that can raise enemy units. In the sequel, ''[[Total Annihilation Kingdoms]]'' Elsin, the Aramonian monarch, can resurrect enemy units and Zhon's Harpy and Taros' Mind Mage can capture enemy units.

** In the [[Spiritual Successor]], ''[[Supreme Commander]]'', any unit that can build or repair can capture enemy units and structures, though is generally easier to just salvage them. Becomes extra fun when you manage to steal an enemy's engineer when they're a different faction to you. Since a single engineer with some resources can construct everything needed to make an entire army, one can then build practically ANYTHING normally reserved for your enemies with a bit of time.

* The same applies in the ''[[Dungeon Keeper]]'' series, where enemies can be converted in the torture chamber, but neither they nor your creatures will enjoy each other's company, and will likely require separate dungeon areas.

** They each have a set enemy. Whilst they won't enjoy being in the company of most of your units they can tolerate it, if you keep them well fed and amused. However, if you put a guard next to a dark mistress, the lady who tortured him, expect conflict.

* Also used in the single-player campaign in ''[[World in Conflict]]''. There are several missions in which you can take control of abandoned enemy units by repairing them, though this isn't possible in normal gameplay.

** There is also a ludicrous mission in which Soviet special forces have seized control of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis island and Governor's island. They use a large number of captured US vehicles against the player. One character lampshades this by remarking that the number of vehicles available to them is very high, and another replies that the post was oversupplied and undermanned. It is not explained why these islands had any heavy vehicles on them at all.

* In the ''[[Heroes of Might and Magic]]'' series, you can start training new troops to reinforce your army the moment you conquer an enemy city, so even if you have an army of do-gooder [[Our Elves Are Better|forest elves]], you can still add [[Demonic Invaders]] or [[The Undead]] without anyone trying to gut the enemy they've hated for generations.

** To be fair, mixing them under the command of one hero generally leads to morale penalties.

* ''[[Age of Wonders]]'' is another TBS fantasy game that allows you to mix units of any faction once you capture a city of theirs, but it generally causes issues due to morale penalties if you try to mix different alignments. Units might abandon your cause, and cities might rebel unless a sufficent force is garrisoned in it. However, the game also gives you the option to convert cities to allied races or just pillage and burn them.

* ''Globulation'' is an extreme example, as converting all enemy "globes" is a more standard way of winning than killing them.

* ''[[Seven Kingdoms]]'' allows you to easily reproduce each race's buildings and units, with the exceptions of the powerful Seat of Power, which can only be built if you have the respective scroll (and each human nation starts with only one). However, human players can't build any of the demonic Frythans structures even if they control some of their units, but it works the other way around. (Getting a large enough number to operate the structures is another issue entirely, as well as keeping them from rebelling).

* ''[[Homeworld]]'' has the Salvage Corvette that can pick up small enemy craft or latch onto larger ships and drag them back to your Mothership, where presumably the enemy crew is subdued (or worse). The enemy ship is then re-launched with a friendly crew, allowing you to control it. The [[Game Breaker]] is that this allows you to exceed the [[Arbitrary Headcount Limit]], potentially giving you a fleet far larger than you could possibly build on your own and making later levels trivial.

* Played straight and averted in the ''[[Warlords]]'' series. In the first two games, once you occupy an enemy city (without pillaging or sacking it) you can produce any units that the enemy could in that city, including special units that are specific to the enemy side and otherwise unavailable to you. In the third game captured cities cannot produce those special units unless your side is already capable of doing so.

* Averted in Warlords Battlecry 2, whereas the hero can convert enemy buildings, but the buildings can not be used to build units. They add to your army limit though.

* ''[[Halo|Halo Wars]]'' gives the UNSC access to SPARTAN [[Super Soldier]]s, who have various abilities. One of these includes the power to hijack enemy vehicles, just like they can in the ''Halo'' FPS games.

* Averted in ''[[Star Trek]] Armada'': to capture an enemy ship, it's shields must be disabled and then boarding parties must be beamed onboard, taken from the capturing ship's crew compliment. The boarding crew will invariably take casualties as well, and ships have a minimum crew requirment before they will operate at full efficiency. The Borg, however, play it straight by holding ships in a tractor beam and transporting the enemy crew ''off'' to be assimilated, though they can also capture ships the 'standard' way.