>>/43686/
I don't deny that they have those common elements but I think that is part of the genre in it's basic form.
The way Dune approached it actually isn't very specific and is fairly basic. The idea is incredibly simple, have two players build armies to fight each other in real time. There has to be some way to make that army so add buildings, that way they can have something to protect and attack too. They can't just make armies of infinite soldiers that would be ridiculous, so they have to cost something, add resources. There, you have your Dune/AoE style RTS.