That I remembered - the major upgrade and concept it was over the previous dune 1.
Then the warcraft series, followed by Command and conquer and then Starcraft, which set the gold standard. AoE came next - after that it just becomes a blur of different RTS types which were competing for top billing.
For some reason the one that I enjoyed the most is always forgotten: Total Annihilation!
It had significantly more depth than StarCraft/WarCraft (and better graphics to boot), but the higher complexity apparently made it less accessible and hence less popular.
For anyone curious: The latest refresh is called "Supreme Commander", and last time I checked there was still an active community/player-base around the OpenSource port "TA Spring".
Cryo's Dune was a completely different type of game (adventure), and was more or less developed and released in parallel to Westwood's Dune. Westwood's Dune is not a sequel at all, it was intended to replace Cryo's about-to-be-canceled game that never ended up being canceled, forcing them to name it Dune II: Battle for Arrakis to distinguish itself from Cryo's game.
You learn something new every day! Thanks - when I played them I was too far out of range for me to get info on game development at the time, iirc I even played them out of order.
Dune really was a brilliant game, and really its balance was pretty good, especially considering it was a time when the word balance itself hadn't been coined.
If I recall Dune 2 has no connection to the slightly earlier Dune other than both were produced by studios owned by the same parent, and neither realized that the other team was working on the license. The Dune team finished first, and to 'simplify' things, they just named the RTS version of the game Dune 2.
Then the warcraft series, followed by Command and conquer and then Starcraft, which set the gold standard. AoE came next - after that it just becomes a blur of different RTS types which were competing for top billing.