Emperor: Battle for Dune was released by Westwood Studios in 2001 and is the studio's final Dune game, made by the developers who essentially founded the real-time strategy genre with the series. Based on Frank Herbert's novels, it sets the player inside a conflict between three houses - Atreides, Harkonnen and Ordos - over control of the desert planet and its spice harvest.\n\nThe main change from earlier entries is a fully three-dimensional engine. Terrain, units and buildings are all modelled in space, which allowed the game to use elevation and effects uncommon in strategy titles until then. It also raised the hardware requirements noticeably for the machines of the day.\n\nThe design keeps the classic Westwood shape: build a base, harvest spice, produce units, attack. The houses differ not only in their own units but in the allied subfactions you can recruit, which opens access to their technology and gives army composition more choice than was usual. A multiplayer mode accompanies the campaign.\n\nThe campaign uses live-action video sequences, a Westwood signature since Command and Conquer. Shortly after release the studio was absorbed by Electronic Arts and closed in 2003, making Emperor one of its last major projects.\n\nOn OldGame.cz the game has a profile with screenshots and release details.

Its place in the genre's development is worth adding. By 2001 real-time strategy had split into two branches - classic base building, and the emerging tactical games without resource harvesting. Emperor belongs firmly to the first, and it is one of the last major titles to carry that model into three dimensions before the genre began to change shape.