Dune II – The Building of a Dynasty

In 1992, three years before they would create the iconic Command & Conquer, Westwood Studios would release a real-time strategy (RTS) game for PC that introduced me to the genre. Based on the books by Frank Herbert, Dune II takes place on the desert planet, Arrakis and allowed players to control one of three houses vying for control over the planet. It is a single-player game.

Dune II – Building of a Dynasty, was unfortunately named, because it was not a sequel to another game. Instead, it had to be named Dune II because Virgin games had also gotten the rights to Frank Herbert’s Dune and launched their game earlier that year. Not so sow confusion, Westwood would simply stick a “II” on theirs and publish it. For years, I had looked for Dune I, thinking that there was a precursor to this game, but the game by Virgin is an adventure strategy game and not an RTS game.

An interesting note about Dune II is that it is not the first RTS. Instead, it took its inspiration from another game that is considered the first RTS, Herzog Zwei for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive.

Dune II Gameplay

Before playing this game, keep in mind that it was one of the first real-time strategy games ever, and defined the genre. Everything that came after it built upon the foundation it laid at their feet.

The game starts with you choosing the house whose army you will be commanding. You can go with the traditional “good guys”, the Atreides, the traditional “bad guys”, the Harkonnen, or a third option that really isn’t mentioned in the books at all and appears to have been added to give the game more variety, the Ordos. The three houses all represent differing interests on Arrakis, a desert planet that just-so-happens to have the galaxy’s most valuable resource, spice.

Resource Gathering

If you’re familiar with the mechanics of RTS games, it should come as no shock that your first goal is to acquire resources in the form of harvesting spice. You have to build harvesters and refineries that convert spice into credits that you can use to construct buildings, train soldiers, or assemble vehicle artillery.

One of the great things about the resource allocation of Dune II is that your harvesters must harvest on the sand, while your buildings are built on solid rock. This is important, as your harvesters can be attacked and swallowed at any moment by a giant sandworm – ala the book. This mechanic is terrifying, as at any moment you may hear female voice say, “worm signs” and see a little white crosshairs on your mini map that represents a hungry sandworm. It’s amazing how invested you get watching your little harvester, full of spice, truck along at a snail’s pace while a sandworm barrels down on it. Will the harvester make it to the rocks before the worm swallows it?! Who knew gathering resources could be so exciting?!

But, you have to power your operations somehow. This happens by building Windtraps. Each Windtrap provides a set amount of power to buildings and is a passive resource. Occasionally you may have to repair them to keep them running at 100% efficiency, but that’s about it. On the flip side, they become an Achilles Heal when attacked, and knocking out an enemies Windtraps can set them way back and keep them from replenishing an army.

Houses

The three houses you choose from all have separate abilities that grow wider and wider as the game progresses. When you start, each house has very simple structures and units. All houses have harvesters and refineries and the Windtraps discussed previously. But the types of soldiers you can train and vehicles you create are very different, with Atriedes starting off the weakest and Harkonnens being the strongest. And here’s a tip, that never changes. Harkonnens have the best armies and vehicle options throughout the game. The Devastator is a Harkonnen weapon that lives up to its name. Mixed with rocket launchers, it’s a nearly unbeatable combination.

Ordos are right in the middle of the two other houses in the early game, with some heavier equipment available earlier in the game, but their late stage special weapons are pretty poor.

Standard Weapons

Each house gets standard troops and vehicles throughout the game. You start with Infantry and move them up to Heavy Troopers. You also get a Trike, which is a fast-moving vehicle that’s great for scouting and revealing the fog of war that makes up each map. As you progress, you unlock tanks and rocket launchers. Once these are unlocked, the game takes on a very different form of offensive combat that most RTS fans are more familiar with.

Special Weapons

When you begin the game, many of the units and vehicles are the same among the houses, it’s just that the Harkonnen and Ordos get heavier equipment earlier, with the Ordos then not getting one of the most essential tanks in the game, but more about that later. Once you get into the later stages of the game, each house has two special weapons. Each weapon set comes at a different phase in the game depending on which house you’re playing as.

First Special Weapons

For the Atreides, the introduction of a Sonic Tank is a great equalizer on the battlefield, as it can decimate a group of soldiers quickly and it’s attack is a straight-line shot through everything in its way. This is the first special weapon the Atreides get and they can be built in the Heavy Vehicle Factory.

The Ordos get a special rocket launcher called a Deviator, that “paints” an enemy vehicle or troop and gives you momentary control over them. While this sounds really cool, and can come in handy when the enemy is only throwing one or two enemies at you at a time, it misses quite frequently and the effect only lasts a few seconds. It costs nearly as much as the Harkonnen’s monster of a special weapon.

The Harkonnen get the freakin’ devastator tank. This giant tank is incredibly slow, but it’s well-armored and can deal real punishment. If that’s not enough, you can kamikaze it into an enemy base and detonate it, unleashing a large area of destruction around it.

Palace Special Weapons

When you’re far enough along in the game, you are able to create a Palace. This giant structure consumes energy and does nothing for 99% of the time you have it sitting in your base. But, the 1% of the time it’s useful, it’s pretty great. The Palace gives you a free weapon to use which is based on a timer. The catch is, you don’t know the timing. They just appear in the Palace ready to use at random.

The Atreides have formed an alliance with the native people of Arrakis, called the Fremen, and they are able to be summoned from the Atreides Palace. These units are always ground troops and randomly attack where they want. The good news is that they appear in random places, and could potentially flank an enemy base, inflicting some major damage to the base before the AI notices. However, they can also be simply run over by a harvester or any treaded vehicle. If you go with Fremen, build as many Palaces as you can and send them as often as they appear available.

The Ordos have a special weapon in the Palace called the Saboteur. It’s basically a fast-moving unit that’s on foot and detonates when it gets to its target. They can wreak havoc if controlled properly, but they’re easy to snipe and any good fortification will have a wall around it which makes the Saboteur basically useless. This is definitely the least effective special weapon, which makes playing as the Ordos in the late game very challenging.

Of course, the Harkonnen have the best weapon. The Death Hand is basically a nuclear weapon that flies wildly out of the control toward your enemy’s base. It’s highly inaccurate and its spawn time is quite long, but it has a huge blast radius and a direct hit from one of these missiles in the heart of your enemy’s base can basically end the game. Building as many Palaces as you can means you can rain down terror on your foes at a decent rate.

Controls

When Dune II was launched, it had very little competition and the RTS genre really wasn’t a thing yet. So not a lot of thought went into making the controls quick and snappy like modern RTS’s. There’s no hot-keying. In fact, there’s no shortcut keys at all. If you want to move a unit, you can’t click on it and then right click where you want it to go. You can’t even click “M” or “A” to move or attack. Instead, you have to click the unit, then click “MOVE” on the unit’s control menu, and then click where you want it to go.

There is also no way to select multiple units and you cannot click on a unit and tell it to attack on its way to a destination. If you tell your unit to “MOVE” that’s all it will do, even if it comes under fire.

This results in a very sluggish gameplay if you’re used to getting 100+ actions per minute in Starcraft. Instead of relying on quick fingers, the game relies heavily on strategically defending and attacking weak points in an enemy’s base – one click at a time.

Should You Play Dune II?

Dune II has a very special place in my heart because it was the first RTS I ever played. I love Dune II, but after playing RTS games for over 20 years, it’s age definitely shows in its controls.

That said, the art style and graphics for the time were groundbreaking. As was the gameplay. When it comes to understanding where the genre has been, and knowing that every RTS since it is simply standing on its shoulders, there’s probably no better place to start than Dune II.

I highly recommend playing it. And if you have the patience, play it as each of the three Houses. The Harkonnen ending is the best ending, so you may want to play that one last.

Acquiring a hardcopy version of it is pretty pricey, and you’d need an older computer to play it. But you can find ROMs of the game if you search for them.