thankfully, the genre has been dissected so there are games like revolution that focus on the warring armies aspect, and games like sim city that focus on the building aspect. and then there are factory games, which is a whole genre unto itself.
Sim City is older than RTS, or at least older than the genre defining RTS of Dune 2. Herzog Zwei release at about the same time as Sim City, and definitely didn't have any influence on it.