You can feel inspired by other games, sever uselessness, saturate with new details and reshape. Let’s take new Civilizations wars for example. The mechanics is as old as computer games. I played similar games 5 times at least (including fascinating Dyson, which now is renamed and extended to Eufloria). But this game is totally different with all this droll little people, magic, towers-altars and rpg-multipier.
P.S. Here are Dyson and Civilizations war screenshoots.