Yes its not exactly the same, but its the principle I am talking about, which would be, you wouldn't just let enemies move past you and towards your cities and support units, you would want to intercept. ZoC gives you the ability to do this. People have been asking for ZoC to stop you moving but still allow you to attack, I don't think this is particularily realistic, because if an enemy is next to you, and they move in a direction other than at you, you will be charging after them to continue the battle, you won't suddenly break out the tea pots, cups and saucers and sit down to a lovely cup of tea and much on a buscuit all the meanwhile your enemy is still right in front of you all be it coming from a slightly different angle, you will still be in battle gear and infact would have the advantage as the enemy tries to manouver around you, the exception is ofcourse when the enemy first retreats out of your ZoC, they effectively disapear, letting your gaurd down, you no longer are chasing to intercept them, then they can charge in for another attack against you or someone else.
Empasuant gives the opposing player the choice of taking your unit if you decided to move past instead of attack, (in certain situations anyway), which is similar to the ZoC mechanic, the enemy is forced to end their turn and give you your turn in the exact way Empasuant does, the enemy moves forward a tile, and then the decision is yours, you can attack this enemy trying to push past you, or you can ignore it and do something more important, i.e if a cavalry moved past you, and this open up a gap so you could attack his great general, this might be worth more to you than trying to stop the cavalry moving on. So it is a similar situation, and both greatly discourages you from moving forward when an enemy is positioned afjacent to you. In Chess you don't have to take the pawn who challenged you to Empasuant, if their is a better strategical advantage to remaining where you are, perhaps you have a check mate planned. Perhaps the Empausuant Challenge was the only way the other player could trick his opponent to letting him out of a check mate, suffice to say, they are similar in that choice of what to do next is giving over to the other player after you make a decision to not attack. In other words, ZoC will open up some strategic possibilities. It will also make you think where to place troops and how to go about attacking, If two enemy units are placed 2 spaces apart, and you decide to move next to one of them, if you only have 2 movement, you wouldnt be able to exit the ZoC and attack the other unit. You would either need to assault your original target, retreat to attack another turn, or "move forward" and let your enemy decide what hes going to do.