Let's look at the big picture

[hellsmaw]

Let us first list the major strategy games of today: The AoE series, a well designed game with accurate historical factions; Total Annhilation, good gameplay (lets not mention the Kigdoms spinoff); The C&C line, excellent in my opinion; Starcraft, which i think had the right idea with faction differences; and Dune.

AoE and the expansion are fun, for a while, the teams are monotonously the same, whatever the small differences, although the terrain was well designed. AoE: AoK is my personal favorite because it has great gameplay, and great teams. Total Annhilation had great gameplay, but its "150 unique units" were actually 75 with slighlt different designs. Command and Conquer was an excellent game that had a stupendously great storyline (especially C&C: RA) and had awesome mission flexibility, the teams each had good unique units on both sides in all games. Starcraft had a good design, however i think the resource gathering was a little lame (i mean, come on, marines from crystals?) but the teams had total differences and had nothing in common, this is this games biggest pro in my opinion.

Finally we look at Dune 2K. This game has an excellent blend of storyline and personality, but the units are almost all the same, sure, in a Tech level 2 game, id pick the Ordos any day with their Raiders, but there were only around 3 unique units per team. I like the starport and the incredibly useful thumpers. The resources are fitting, seeing as they coincide with the storyline and the original book. The worms are an excellent addition, providing some indigenous life forms that you can twist to your use. The Terrain is repetitive--all maps look alike--and this causes some boredom other than picking maps with the most spice and barriers.