The thing that makes me cry is that there is no need to plagiarise to make a good game:

Music was amazingly good. Surely someone else can make atmospheric music?
Simple base building. Again not revolutionary or copyrighted.
A simple tech tree.
Simple construction.
Soldiers that can get better
Some nasties to kill

But every game has managed to get this wrong. How is this possible? You're competing with a game that sometimes required you to sell goods if you thought that the base would be attacked as else you'd get lumbered with 100 guns to defend it with!

Yes, the AI wasn't amazing, graphics were oh so 1992 and it was essentially made for DOS.

It should have been that the old game was almost a given, and the differences were in the increased options in every sphere - men that could perform many functions, different resources with different properties, interaction with governments with all having an agenda of their own, an enemy that increases in ability and who'se empire develops too... custom weapons / vehicles and of course the option to mod the thing to boot. 15 years, and nothing...

The quake 2 engine game you can't even destroy walls. Better graphics, then take out a core feature... bravo I'd rather have a 16k bit palette of sprites and an increase in resolution.