How is the Dominion "Powerful" in WoL?

[Kimera757]

In Dark Templar Saga #2, the consequences of being both the most powerful force and not being as strong as before were clearly pointed out in Valerian's PoV chapters. The part where the protagonists escaped from the Brontes floating scrap yard was a good one.

4 years game-world time isn't exactly what I call...a decade...nor does it explain how the Dominion even has the strength and resources to invent new technologies and war machines (especially now with their cashcow from the KML supposedly breaking away from the Dominion).

The KMC was part of the Dominion for less than a year. Just because the KMC is the richest doesn't mean the Dominion has no money.

Or why people large enough to form an empire would even want to continue to follow Mengsk after he clearly couldn't handle the position the Dominion was stuck in during Brood War.

Mengsk probably lied to them. "I won" when it was really "Kerrigan let me live".

After all, even if he couldn't beat the zerg, who else could? Raynor? That guy is leading less than 400 people. A destructive civil war would weaken the Dominion at a time when people were afraid of the zerg and the UED.

The same rationale applies to the USA's Patriot Act. People were so afraid of terrorists that for a number of years few people would question its abuses. Was it more than four years? Quite possibly, I haven't kept track of Patriot Act polling data.

Everyone seems to be depending on the theory that Mengsk seems to keep a large force stored somewhere or that his forces are spread out amongst all worlds controlled by the Dominion.

Everyone?

Duran's comments right before mission 2 made that clear. Forces had to be called to the New Dylarian Shipyards, which, incidentally, was a big fat target and yet there wasn't a single active battlecruiser there until the UED had already stolen the majority of the inactive ones there. Either Mengsk is an idiot or he has good reason not to guard every place, like not having enough troops to do so.

Gerard DuGalle
Captain, Vice Admiral Stukov has informed me of your flawless sortie upon Braxis. I must commend you for beginning our campaign with such a decisive victory. Our Tac Teams have decrypted the Dominion's datalink and have gained access to Mengsk's most guarded files. However, our work is not yet complete.

We have ascertained the location of the Dylarian shipyards. These shipyards, serving as a fueling and repair station for the Dominion, house a number of functional Battlecruisers in dry-dock. To assure that our domination of this sector remains uncontested, you are to assault the shipyards and liberate as many of these capital ships as possible.

Samir Duran
Gentlemen, I recommend that you launch this attack using the utmost caution. Dominion Command can typically reinforce its outlying bases within sixteen standard hours. You should expect some sort of reprisal from Emperor Mengsk shortly.

Gerard DuGalle
Ah, the turncoat. I suggest that you pay keen attention to rank when you address the Captain and myself, Lieutenant Duran. Is that understood?

Wouldn't you think that THESE are the men Mengsk rounded up to retake Korhal in the mission Duke was killed? It was a mission to retake the Dominion Capital world; I think that's a good enough reason to round up who you could.

You never put all your troops in the same place, especially when you have allies to "take the lash" (Kerrigan specifically said her forces would lead the attack) and you don't put all your forces where Kerrigan can destroy them all when she inevitably turns.

(People make Mengsk out to be a fool for trusting Kerrigan, but his comments indicated he never did. He was forced, and was cooperating for his survival.)

And if he had men stored somewhere then why would he have to depend on calling a bunch of random mercenaries to form a ragtag fleet to fight Kerrigan in the final battle? It's because he already called in those men he had in storage for the retaking Korhal mission, which were killed off already; causing Mengsk to resort to hiring mercenary groups.

-------------

Again, you never commit all your forces to an attack. You can never assume you have a 100% chance of victory. What if he'd deadlocked with Kerrigan? Well now he's got an empire that can be easily taken from him via civil war since he didn't leave troops at home. What if the UED showed up (well they did) but attacked Mengsk in preference to Kerrigan?

[Gradius]

According to Story So Far (page 4), Kerrigan helped Mengsk recover his fleet. Of course, she lay the hurt on Korhal, but she didn't kill Mengsk; she left him alone.

No, Mengsk didn't lose everything. Just everything on the map

Mind you, Story So Far is newer, but it seems like Mengsk has been safeguarding his own forces.

Ok, but we don't see any of this stuff in the game. This is just Blizzard reiterating that "Mengsk is still powerful" despite showing us the opposite in the actual game.

More to the point, it's not so much "why is the dominion still strong" but "why is the KMC and Umoja still weak?" What hits did these guys take? There is no evidence that they were touched by the Zerg, or even the UED. Fenix even comments on how it's strange that they're still managing to rake in cash while the Dominion is getting strangle locked.

When SC1 starts we are expected to believe that the KMC and Umoja are the counterparts to the Confederacy, let us say, half as strong as them to be fair. But then we have:

Confederacy > Dominion in Sc1 > Dominion after the UED invasion > Dominion after Kerrigan backstabbed Mengsk on Korhal > Dominion after losing the battle of Omega.

Umoja & the KMC are literally four levels of victory above the Dominion. So what the heck is going on? Why are they still getting abused by the Dominion? Yeah yeah, the Dominion is spread out over other worlds and simply reclaimed every planet after the BW, but that still puts them in no better a position than everyone else. And why didn't the KMC & Umoja take advantage of the Dominion's weakness in any way whatsoever?

SC2 should have shown the Dominion to be of lower status than Umoja & the KMC, but still surviving at best. It is those factions which should have been unveiling new weapons of war.

1) Mengsk has forces all over the Dominion, which is big.
2) Mengsk's forces are so dispersed, he keeps a strategic reserve "out there" somewhere rather than defending each planet. When the UED invaded Braxis, they could steamroll the opposition as they had a day or two before the Dominion could respond with reinforcements.

I'd be willing to be that the UED either killed those forces as well or "impressed them into the fleet," at which point they died during the battles of Char & Omega.

4) Kerrigan helps Mengsk get his fleet back before striking at the UED. (This is mentioned in Story So Far, not the game, and we don't know where that fleet was, if it had been captured by the UED, etc.)

"battle-scarred remnants of the Dominion fleet from the UED’s assault" means it is talking about the ships that are still fighting on Korhal. The Protoss broke through the siege and rescued what was left of Mengsk's fleet (which in BW consisted of one battlecruiser which is all the player ever saw).

5) Kerrigan humiliates Mengsk, but after Raynor disses her, she gets tired of the slaughter and leaves.

That's somewhat of an assumption. She accomplished her objectives and destroyed both of their bases. She left because she was done, not because she was tired of the slaughter.

In Dark Templar Saga #2, the consequences of being both the most powerful force and not being as strong as before were clearly pointed out in Valerian's PoV chapters.

And that's the problem people have. Obviously Blizzard seems to think that the Dominion should be the most powerful, because the Dominion is the only faction they seem to care about, but there's still no valid reason for that to be the case.

Point is, you know the writing is starting to go to crap when a military defeat means so damn little, especially like four of them in a row.

[RetlocLive]

After all, even if he couldn't beat the zerg, who else could? Raynor? That guy is leading less than 400 people. A destructive civil war would weaken the Dominion at a time when people were afraid of the zerg and the UED.

And there probably SHOULD of been a civil war. Hard to believe that he somehow accomplished being able to lie to his peoples faces after all his Brood War losses. His role is no different to real life with how Stalin came to absolute power in the Soviet Union.

The Soviet people knew Stalin was an @ss; he was killing his own people long before WWII even started. However, after successfully holding off the German invasion and eventually defeating Germany, people began to view him as a saint. They started to look up to him, because his way of doing things led him to victory over the Germans. It didn't matter if he continued to kill his own people, people still followed him, because what he did led to success for the Soviets.

Now for Mengsk, he was a nobody that gained fame for his overthrowing of the Confederacy. People rallied around him because he did something huge and was successful accomplishing it; perfect parallel to Stalin. Now with Brood War coming around, it was the exact opposite; losing big on 3+ separate occassions and having to return home a beaten man after the final BW battle.

Yet somehow despite his losing streak, the people stuck with him, and even his men stick by him despite all the losses they endured under Mengsk's rule throughout Brood War. Even in Wings of Liberty that losing streak continued in the opening cinematic, saying that Mengsk wasted trillions of dollars hunting down Raynor during the four year intermission. Hes clearly showen to be incapable...yet the people don't seem to care.

Duran's comments right before mission 2 made that clear. Forces had to be called to the New Dylarian Shipyards, which, incidentally, was a big fat target and yet there wasn't a single active battlecruiser there until the UED had already stolen the majority of the inactive ones there. Either Mengsk is an idiot or he has good reason not to guard every place, like not having enough troops to do so.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with the whole "He had forces stationed all across the Dominion worlds" notion, because it makes sense. It's just the fact that he had to depend on mercenary groups in the final battle that makes this theory go down the drain. Cause again, why depend on random mercenaries if you still had a ton of men in storage to depend on?

[Kimera757]

Ok, but we don't see any of this stuff in the game. This is just Blizzard reiterating that "Mengsk is still powerful" despite showing us the opposite in the actual game.

A complaint about retcons is valid.

More to the point, it's not so much "why is the dominion still strong" but "why is the KMC and Umoja still weak?" What hits did these guys take? There is no evidence that they were touched by the Zerg, or even the UED. Fenix even comments on how it's strange that they're still managing to rake in cash while the Dominion is getting strangle locked.

The KMC was. There was a mission in Brood War about it. (Alas, with no UNN in the background, we can't tell how badly the KMC was beat outside the mission )

Fenix was talking about that in the same mission. No mention was made of Umoja, but we've not seen evidence they have a large force. They were primarily built as a force to defend against the Confederacy. They acted scared of the Confederates (they only opposed the Confederates in the shadows; witness their reaction to assassination attempts on Umojan soil in I, Mengsk), yet the Confederates didn't push into war against the Umojans either.

When SC1 starts we are expected to believe that the KMC and Umoja are the counterparts to the Confederacy, let us say, half as strong as them to be fair. But then we have:

Confederacy > Dominion in Sc1 > Dominion after the UED invasion > Dominion after Kerrigan backstabbed Mengsk on Korhal > Dominion after losing the battle of Omega.

I wouldn't rate the KMC that highly. They got beaten, badly, in the Guild Wars, losing all their planets except Moria itself. Heaven's Devils made some cutting comments about how a rag-tag band of mercenaries like the KMC couldn't stand up to the Confederacy. (Obviously they've created new colonies, and had enough money to bribe the Confederacy even before the Brood War.) I figure the Morians concentrated on money rather than military power, figuring they couldn't win, and had little reason to be ready to fight until the zerg invasion.

They're also not half. Just look at their population figures. Umoja and Moria have just over 2 billion people each. Korhal has 6 billion. The Dominion has more colonies than either. (I can only find four Umojan colonies, and one was a space station!) The Dominion's population is much larger than that of its rivals realistically. I think Blizzard didn't go into enough detail when creating the StarCraft universe. It's impossible to guess how big the Confederacy was in terms of population or settled planets. (It went from thirteen planets to thirteen core planets, for instance.) However, it had to be more than bigger than its rivals, considering the Dominion, founded after losing a big chunk of Tarsonis' population, is bigger than the rivals.

Umoja & the KMC are literally four levels of victory above the Dominion. So what the heck is going on? Why are they still getting abused by the Dominion? Yeah yeah, the Dominion is spread out over other worlds and simply reclaimed every planet after the BW, but that still puts them in no better a position than everyone else. And why didn't the KMC & Umoja take advantage of the Dominion's weakness in any way whatsoever?

Both did, just in little bitty ways.

The UP just acts scared. Their actions seem to involve spies or recruiting Dominion runaways. In Changeling (the story), we're told the Morians would send nuke suicide bombers against Dominion mining operations. (The Morians want money, not power.)

Historically it's actually pretty easy to recover from a massive loss. (I was just reading books about the War of the Roses and Pearl Harbor--Hiroshima.) In a setting like StarCraft, nothing but a mass population extinction event (I'm looking at Korhal, Chau Sara and Tarsonis here) would count as an "unrecoverable" loss. Those sorts of losses generally occur at the hands of the zerg. The UED wasn't interested in slaughter, they were interested in control. They wouldn't go around killing civilians (who could join the military later). Naturally the zerg have no such niceties. If Kerrigan hadn't left Korhal "early", she could have done some severe damage to Korhal. But she didn't, seeing how there's 6 billion + people there.

SC2 should have shown the Dominion to be of lower status than Umoja & the KMC, but still surviving at best. It is those factions which should have been unveiling new weapons of war.

Blizzard is invested in a villain like Mengsk. Among other things, Raynor's beef is with Mengsk. He's actually allied to some extent with the UP and KMC.

I'd be willing to be that the UED either killed those forces as well or "impressed them into the fleet," at which point they died during the battles of Char & Omega.

Nope. Not in that mission anyway. They did smack down Duke's "revenge fleet", but in that same mission briefing we were told that reinforcements had yet to take revenge for Braxis. Considering Stukov was able to rush right back to Braxis (which didn't even have a planetary garrison yet until the end of Patriot's Blood) I assume Mengsk never sent a revenge force to Braxis. Braxis' value fell right after the UED victory there. Once those codes were taken, it was too late to undo that. (Indeed, Mengsk wasn't in charge by the time the protoss melted it.)

"battle-scarred remnants of the Dominion fleet from the UED’s assault" means it is talking about the ships that are still fighting on Korhal. The Protoss broke through the siege and rescued what was left of Mengsk's fleet (which in BW consisted of one battlecruiser which is all the player ever saw).

That's the problem with having an engine like that. It's too bad StarCraft I couldn't have more extensive briefings (like the UNN ones in StarCraft II), but who wants to sit and watch twenty minutes of briefings per mission? Not many.

That's somewhat of an assumption. She accomplished her objectives and destroyed both of their bases. She left because she was done, not because she was tired of the slaughter.

That's what she said in-game. Same thing she said in Shadow Hunters too. I don't think it's an assumption.

[Samir Duran
And what of your allies here on Korhal, my Queen? What would you have done with them?

Infested Kerrigan
They are of no further use to me. Though they have proven themselves useful, it might be dangerous to allow them to live. Without the services of General Duke, Mengsk will be easy to deal with. But Raynor and Fenix are uncannily resourceful. They must all be eradicated. Cerebrate, I want both General Duke's and Fenix's bases destroyed. Leave no one alive.

She left Raynor alive. She did crush their bases though, but not their populations. She was a little busy thinking about the Second Overmind.

And there probably SHOULD of been a civil war. Hard to believe that he somehow accomplished being able to lie to his peoples faces after all his Brood War losses. His role is no different to real life with how Stalin came to absolute power in the Soviet Union.

Did anyone kill Stalin? There's a rumor he was poisoned, but even if that's true (rather than a natural death), that was nearly a decade after World War II. The KGB (or whatever it was called those days) existed for a reason. Like Mengsk, Stalin was a dictator.

The Soviet people knew Stalin was an @ss; he was killing his own people long before WWII even started. However, after successfully holding off the German invasion and eventually defeating Germany, people began to view him as a saint. They started to look up to him, because his way of doing things led him to victory over the Germans. It didn't matter if he continued to kill his own people, people still followed him, because what he did led to success for the Soviets.

I think Mengsk was able to claim credit for not being crushed by the zerg (despite, ironically, being responsible for the Fall of Tarsonis to the zerg). Pretty much all pro-Dominion propaganda we've seen says he's the best guard against the zerg. (It helps that the UNN is owned by the Dominion, or was. In fact, as a result of the revelation of Mengsk's treachery at Tarsonis, colonists did break out in rebellion. But they didn't have that information after the Brood War.)

Now for Mengsk, he was a nobody that gained fame for his overthrowing of the Confederacy. People rallied around him because he did something huge and was successful accomplishing it; perfect parallel to Stalin. Now with Brood War coming around, it was the exact opposite; losing big on 3+ separate occassions and having to return home a beaten man after the final BW battle.

Be that as it may, he was able to sell himself as the best hope against the zerg and the UED, in essence a "strong leader".

Yet somehow despite his losing streak, the people stuck with him, and even his men stick by him despite all the losses they endured under Mengsk's rule throughout Brood War. Even in Wings of Liberty that losing streak continued in the opening cinematic, saying that Mengsk wasted trillions of dollars hunting down Raynor during the four year intermission. Hes clearly showen to be incapable...yet the people don't seem to care.

That's because hardly anyone knew of that. Kate Lockwell gets cut off every time she says something like that. (As Gradius pointed out, it's not realistic that Lockwell could have kept her position when she spouts so much accurate but anti-Dominion stuff like that.)

I'd like to point out that Stalin wasn't responsible for the USSR's victories. Stalin's incompetence led to lots of Soviet losses shortly after the Nazi invasion. Stalin responded by stepping back and letting professionals run the show. (Hitler did the opposite; in his final days he sat in a bunker and gave orders to divisions that no longer existed. He's a big part of the reason the Soviets won the Battle of Stalingrad.) Stalin stole credit for the victory afterward.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with the whole "He had forces stationed all across the Dominion worlds" notion, because it makes sense. It's just the fact that he had to depend on mercenary groups in the final battle that makes this theory go down the drain. Cause again, why depend on random mercenaries if you still had a ton of men in storage to depend on?

It would have made sense to send some, but not all of them. As shown in the flavor text for the Mercenaries map, Mengsk was weakened by the war. I just don't think he was left with nothing or allowed all his forces to be crushed in one battle.

[Turalyon]

I'm not entirely convinced that Mengsk had the man-power and influence after his several defeats in BW to realistically position himself again as Emperor of the Dominion let alone totally rebuild it, expand and improve everything on a massive scale.

Mengsk's rise and subsequent reign up until the UED took him down was all very short-lived to begin with. Also, given the apparent (retconned?) size of the Terran presence in the sector and the animosity that the majority of the Terran people would still have against the Confederacy (was there really enough time between SC1 and BW for the Terran population to really see the difference between the Confederacy and the Dominion?), there must have been other militant groups and charismatic leaders that would have been waiting in the wings. Especially more-so after Mengsk's numerous defeats in BW.

I would have expected Mengsk to spend the interim four years between BW and WoL to be spending most of his time re-consolidating his power base and removing opponents trying to take up the reigns of Terran governance from which the UED had left a sudden power vacuum. Instead, we have him just magically rebounding (almost literally) from his defeats straight back into a waiting Emperor's chair (and all the powers that it gives him) to kick-start a system-wide industrial revolution yielding miraculous developments given the time frame and with no seeming opposition whatsoever.

[Hawki]

Mengsk had roughly six months to establish a power base between the fall of the Confederacy and the UED's overthrow, not to mention that the period of overthrow lasted a very short ammount of time. And as Mengsk himself said, tyrants can only survive as long as they portray another tyrant as a threat. He's got a bonus with the zerg and protoss-people are willing to trade in their freedom for security under the circumstances, and it's understandable, especially during the Dominion's founding, and Mengsk's ultimatum to former Confederate worlds.

Would there be internal opposition/power struggles? Probably, but we've seen his approach to that, whether it's sending people like Duke off to Bhekar Ro, or outright executing potential enemies. And there's a range of outside opposition as well, whether it be espionage conducted by the UP, or rebel groups such as Raynor's Raiders or the KLF, not to mention attempted revolution by Hauler and co. In essence, there's a flood of opposition, and if it wasn't for the portrayed alien threat, he could have been in a different situation.

All in all, I think there's two main issues that have been cited in this discussion. The first is the nature of rebuilding-it's been seen. There's a plenthora of material set between BW and WoL, and we've seen everything from industrialisation/innovation to rebellion. The other issue is whether four years is an adequate timeframe. For that question, I think it's entirely subjective in that a) industrial output in the 26th century is entirely speculative (bar being more rapid than our own persumably) and there's no in-universe precedent to suggest that it is too rapid. Admittedly, you could cite the Confederacy's refusal to go to war with the Protectorate over the Hyperion as a case of "recovery is too fast," but I'd still say that's more due to war weariness than capacity, and that's still a 1 year gap rather than 4.

So why was four chosen? I think it's effectively tradition in Blizzard games, how installments 1-2 of a series are close together on the timeline, with three being far off. Don't want to get too off-topic, but the short gap between BW and WoL matches the timeframes of Warcraft and Diablo, and if there was a StarCraft III, I'd also guess it would make a similar jump into the future.

[Aldrius]

That's what she said in-game. Same thing she said in Shadow Hunters too. I don't think it's an assumption.

She said she was tired of the slaughter. It was a general comment, not her reason for leaving, at least not necessarily.

[Kimera757]

She said she was tired of the slaughter. It was a general comment, not her reason for leaving, at least not necessarily.

She went into further detail in Shadow Hunters, and she didn't seem tired of slaughtering DuGalle's troops, when she moved against the UED and Second Overmind with a vengeance afterward. (Even in Omega, she only focused her ire on the UED. She even let the protoss go. The epilogue also went into letting her "rivals" live, although that could have been fear of the future talking.)

[solidsamurai]

after the beating they took in Brood War?

The handwave here is that the dominion occupies a very sprawling (and ballin') territory. They couldn't possibly lose everything, and there's always so much more that they could mobilise, so what they lack is administration. So maybe, administration growth is one of the big changes that occurs in those 4 years.

I think the UED just presented a very large force and made them surrender after a few decisive battles (which were all conducted by a low ranking up-and-coming officer, for some reason xD).

Arcturus was smart to yield, though the prospect of facing his execution was what delayed his decision for probably a few missions (until the one where he gets rescued by Raynor; which is the one I'm stuck on).

[phazonjunkie]

I think the real question, ultimately isn't why the dominion is still the most powerful terran faction after all it's setbacks and defeats, or even why Mengsk is still it's emperor.
Rather I think the real question should be; 'Why is Blizzard so invested in a villain like Mengsk in the first place?' Especially in light of Metzen's own admission that Mengsk's story has more or less been told & there is little more they can think to do with him. As far as the SC saga is concerned he's essentially dead weight. The fact that he comes off as being such a flanderized generic baffoon who get's bested at virtually every turn doesn't help much.