Another nicely evil possibility for preventing stalemates without the forced, artificial feel of the current system: any battle over a certain length has an increasing chance of attracting the attention of Lammashtas, Horrors or other nasties, who will be glad to clean up the paralyzed or unconscious remnants. Both have armor piercing or negating attacks, IIRC, and can hit hard enough to overcome regeneration even on Gods (if the God is defenseless). The longer the battle drags on, the more unpleasant surprises are attracted to the battlefield...
I don't think there's anything that could survive being surrounded by Doom Horrors while unconscious.
This would still usually have the same *practical* result as the current system (all the paralyzed/unconscious units are eliminated), but would be less likely to offend certain players - at least there's some rationale for the deaths. And it would look cool.
Edit: You might still want a hardcoded time limit to make *sure* the game doesn't hang in the hosting - but move it back another 20 or so turns after the horror attacks start, so that it will be almost impossible for the time limit to actually be triggered. The theoretical possibility won't bother players nearly as much as having it actually happen.
[ February 19, 2004, 12:21: Message edited by: Chris Byler ]