This was the very game that started off the entire Real-Time Strategy genre. Warcraft is more widely known, but a lot of people don't give Dune 2 the credit.
I certainly remember my dad ordering this game through the mail back in early 1993. The version he got contained a number of bugs. When you went to the Mentat screen and clicked on Wind Traps, the game would lock up. There were others, but it has been too long since I actually played the game without using DosBox.
I always thought the easy way to beat the game was to play the Harkonnen. Besides their vile statistics they were strong and well armored. I used a number of Devastators to take down the rocket turrets and the Rocket Launchers to destroy the Refinery and Construction building from a distance. Don't forget the lovely Death Hand. If I missed my target I could always go back and reload my save file.
The Atredies were to me, sort of a balance. Their Fremen were more of a nuisance than an actual help, but the Sonic Tank did good enough. The rest of their units were either good or average.
The Ordos were hard to play as. You cannot build Rocket Launchers at your Heavy Factory, you have to import them. Their Trikes were fast, but weak and vulnerable. My biggest complaint was it's unit at the Palace. I spent 999 Credits my Harvester cashed in from the spice to build a Palace, just for a Saboteur? I mean, it was weak. One hit from a Siege Tank or a Rocket Launcher was more than enough to blow up the Saboteur, and it just proved that I wasted a lot of Credits. Would of been better to have a group of them, and invisible to Turrets/Rocket Turrets.
Overall, the game was one of the best in it's day. The cinematics were well presented and highly detailed, and the gameplay was the first of it's kind. The only problem was the copy protection, but I guess that was meant for people not to copy the data and source code onto a blank floppy disk. Hehe
Good times...