posted 23 March 2008 09:06 AM EDT (US)
We must start off with a few key concepts to fully understanding the strengths and weaknesses. Thor is the most versatile god in AoT, and is most often considered one of, if not the strongest of the god choices. A few reasons for this is the fact that because Thor is Norse, he offers a offensive mindset, but because of his specific bonuses, wields a strong lategame and many different playing styles. Few gods have the ability to have a very good early game and lategame, and the ease to adapt to the opponent in a way that Thor can. If you are bad at Thor, either a)you are playing him wrong, meaning you arent using his strengths properly or b)you have been misinformed about exactly how to play Thor at his full potential.
The key concepts of Thor are as follow:
To fully understand all of these concepts, this must be your mindset:
To achieve this:
By this, I mean that if you want to get good at Thor, playing other gods all the time will certainly not help the cause.You have to play him a lot, and gain experience with his bonuses and how to abuse them to achieve victory, or else you are probably wasting your time. Thor is a complicated god, and it will take awhile before you know how to use him correctly, but at the end, your understanding of AoT as a whole will be far greater, and I'm sure your rate will be too.
When reading this guide, you should already know the names and effects of all the upgrades and godpowers that Thor has. This is not a noobie guide, if you do not know those, then you are out of luck. The basics do not necessarily pertain to Thor, however in general, they are necessary to success on AoT.
Ulfsarks are good at scouting, though probably not the best. At the start of the game, have your ulfsark do a circle around your base. There are 2 phases of scouting that I like to think you want to achieve by the 15 minute mark.
Phase 1
At the beginning, you should always scout for your town centers, your forward gold mines(s), your 2nd(or more) hunt, and basically your general area of the map. Having random big black spots on the mini-map is a bad thing, dont let that happen by not always shift-click scouting, but by always keeping a watchful eye on your scout, for example if you pass by an area and you notice 2 deer, go investigate to see if there are more deer in the black spot next to them, to see if its worth moving your hunt there later on in the game for a food source. Also, as this has happened to me many times in a game, you can scout your entire side of the map, except for 1 black spot, where there is a large gold mine, and later on you say to yourself "damn where is my gold," that is probably where it is. Most people say do a circle around your base with your ulfsark, however though is generally correct, maps like watering hole and alfheim this can be difficult. It is best to just wing it and make sure your ulsark scouts efficiently( leaving 1 small side blank, going to other side of map to scout, then going back to that 1 spot to scout is scouting innefficiently).Phase 1 usually ends when you build your temple.
On water maps, do the same, however of course build your dock and house 1st. On Mediterranean there is a small exception to the rule:Go down 1 side of the water, searching for pigs, then follow the edge of the water around it, finally making it around to your base again. This works out because if you think about it, if your opponent scouts the opposite you did at 1st, then you can steal his pigs when you are rounding the lake to the 2nd side.
Phase 2
You are doing the same thing in Phase 1, except it is your opponent's stuff. Knowing where his forward gold or hunt is is essential to efficient raiding, and what his strategy will be for the game (i.e. If your opponent is eggy and they have very forward gold, they will have to be aggresive to avoid being gold starved
Not only is armory important as any god on AoT, it becomes a even larger role in the game when you are Thor. Since his armory is cheaper, and so are the armor upgrades, as well you can get far better armor earlier than your opponent(assuming he is not Thor too), this can be your ticket to victory. Always get an armory as soon as you can. This will save you from having to make one later on, and its important to use this bonus as early as your economy can afford it, and purchase armor upgrades. Though Line upgrades are important as Thor, you will find yourself making more than just 1 unit, more of a variety of units throughout the game, so armor upgrades overall benefit you more due to the fact they benefit more than just 1 unit type like line upgrades do, so more often than not, armor is the way to go as Thor.
Dwarves can perform a large role in your economy as Thor. However some think that the bonus Thor's dwarves get are more than it actually is, which is why its important that you understand how to use this bonus.Thor Dwarves do get a bonus on other resources, however not a large enough one where you should have more anywhere close the a 1:1 dwarf:gatherer ratio.As Thor, you should still usually only have dwarves on gol,d unless you are in a food shortage or you have an excess amount of gold. You should always be looking to replace dwarves on food or wood with gatherers, and moving those dwarves to gold. Having a few dwarves on each resource wont hurt, but it wont help as much as some people think. His dwarves are also cheaper, sometimes making it tempting to make them instead of gatherers, which can be a common mistake.
Raiding is a key part of winning with Thor. If you cannot raid and disrupt your opponent's eco, then you will surely lose the game, unless he cannot do the same either(don't bet on it).Raiding can make or break the game for you. It takes up micro time from your opponent by making him respond to your raids, it weakens his eco as you are causing idle time, and possibly killing them.
Blocking villagers from escaping is also important. You do not want to attack the villagers from a random spot, but preferably between where they can escape to and where the villagers are gathering resources from. As you can see in the picture below, move your raiders to where the villagers are most likely to run.The black arrow represents where you are tempted to attack the villagers, the blue arrow represents where you should attack the villagers from and the red arrow represents the escape route for your opponent's villagers.
Group raids can be difficult to manage, however they are very important. Nobody likes to respond to a group of raiders attacking their gold, nevermind another group simultaneously raiding their woodies. This is what you want to achieve, making it harder for your opponent to respond to your raids, making them more successful in killing villagers.Instead of having 1 group of 10 raiding calvary, divide the group into 2 groups of 5, and cntrl group them so that when you always know where they are, making sure they are not dying.
Probably the most important thing about raiding is not letting random raiders die or get trapped. You want to do as much damage to his eco, without letting your own raiders die. Because then you are forced to pay for more RC, which does not help the cause at all. Avoiding this is mostly done by always keeping "1 eye" on what your raiders are doing.
Thor's economy can be as strong as any god lategame, as long as you know how to manage it. Main key points for any economy are having the proper amount of villagers, balancing villagers on resources, getting economic upgrades, and also knowing when to start setting up a trade route.
You do not want an excess of food, and have little gold while having 50 villagers farming and 10 mining with 10 trade oxen. You will mostly want to create another market, and start AQing caravans. The point is you dont want your economy to be inbalanced because it handicaps Thor's ability to make a wide variety of units to counter the opponent. If you have a mod, or scroll over your resource bars with the mouse, you can see how many villagers you have on each resource, every once in awhile look at it to see if your eco is inbalanced.
Making a trade route is vital to winning lategame. Whether you like it or not, you WILL run out of gold mines. It is smart to make your trade route as soon as you have the available food, and to make it as long as possible to make sure you get the most gold you possibly can from the distance of the route.Walling and towering your trade route is also important, as if you have run out of safe mines, and no longer have trade, you most likely lose.
Make sure that when you are mining from gold, your ox cart is setup so that there is the least amount of walking time. This rule also goes for wood gathering.
How to put ox cart for gold:
Also, make sure that your farming is efficiently placed.You want the walking time from the farm to the town center as short as possible.
You can do 2 strategies in this situation, both strategies calling for a 5:15 advance. Full raiding calvary (preferably done on open maps such as Savannah) and 2 tc semi fast heroic(preferably on closed maps such as Watering Hole) are your best bet.
Here the Build Order(which is done for both strats, you just decide whether to making longhouses and make full RC or go to build a 2nd town center after advance):
Dwarven mine-->
6 to food
2 to wood
cart to wood
1 to wood
ulfsark
1 dwarf to gold
2 to food
1 dwarf to gold
cart to gold
2 to wood
1 to gold
With the Full raider strat, you want to get full pop with raiders, then take them off AQ to make a 2nd town center around 10-12 minutes. This strat works more vs Ra and Set than Isis because she will have A+E to protect herself against your raiders when building her forward migdol.After classical, you want to AQ dwarves to gold, then gatheres to herdables.
The 2 tc Heroic works very well because you will have a stronger economy by 10 minutes than the egyptian, the only problem with this strategy is that on open maps, it is very easy for the eggy player to be aggresive towards you, and possibly severely weaken your economy while you are transitioning to Heroic.When you reach classical, have 1 tc AQ gatherers to herdables while 1 tc AQ dwarves to gold. Your Hersir you build should be making longhouses and your armory.When you start going heroic, queue up 5-10 RC from your longhouse to keep your opponent busy in case he plans on disrupting your hill fort building. A combo of Jarls+ulfsarks+Battle Boars with Flaming Weapons can be very effective vs Chariots and Elephants. The only problem you might have is vs mass myth units. If you feel he will probably do this, then you should go forseti and make more Hersir than Jarl, and get the Hall of Thanes tech as soon as you get the 300 wood after you make a hill fort. Example game : glhfuwillneedit vs OtB_Ro Watering Hole.rcx
Usually the best plan is a boom style of play. The important part on low hunt is too injure your opponents economy as much as you can because on low hunt Egyptian is very dangerous with migdol spam and chariots. Making raiders while really focusing on economy upgrades (get them earlier than usual) will be essential here. So make groups of raiders and raid him, especially his few food sources, and boom until you can hopefully afford expensive jarls vs the egyptian.Example Game : makemyniggasgrow vs ONU Velhow Oasis .rcx
You want to push them off fishing so they cannot achieve a good heroic time. Then use the food you gain by winning water to manage a good economy while achieving a good heroic time. Here is the water build order i use.
1)At start of game queue up an ulfsark, send your free ulfsark to build a dock.
2)Take dwarves and put them on straggler tree, use dwarven mine normally,
3) Queue up 4 villagers onto that straggler tree. Take the 2nd ulfsark and build another dock away from your 1st dock, then a house. You should still have enough wood to start making fishing ships from your 1st dock.
4) Now you should have 3 gatherers+ 2 dwarves on that tree. Now move dwarves to the DM.
5) move villagers to a forest after that straggler tree is depleted.
Now you should have 4 gatherers on wood and 2 dwarves on your DM. Scout with both ulfs for pigs and gold, tcs etc etc.
dwarf to wood
dwarf to gold
dwarf to wood (you should have enough wood to be making ships out of both docks now.
1 dwarf to gold
2 dwarfs to wood( stop making fishing ships out of 1 dock and make temple at home)
ox cart to gold mine, and another dwarf to gold.
1 gatherer and 2 dwarfs to pigs
You should end up with 6-7 dwarves on gold, 4 gatherers and 4 dwarves on wood and 1 gatherer and 2 dwarves on goats.
Advance through Frejya at around 4:30 (press the button then)
This is a very good BO because it allows for a very strong economy when you get to classical. Normally with this build order you make 3-5 longhouses to protect your fishing ships then going heroic with a few hersir. Great booming BO. Hard BO and takes a lot of precision, gl!
P.S on Anatolia make docks on opposite sides and on Midgard make docks on opposite corners.
Thor vs Zeus.
Use the build order for vs egyptians on high hunt for this matchup as well. You usually want to go Forseti as Zeus's Athena Rush is very strong vs Thor. This will probably the the hardest matchup in the game for you as Thor. The key to winning this matchup is putting up a good defensive and still being able to have a decent heroic time to secure a 2nd gold mine.Never fight restoration, always be aware of how much gold you have access to and having a good amount of hersir is important. The later the game goes on, the better chance Thor probably has in this matchup. Especially middle to late Heroic Age when Thor armory techs will eventually balance out the naturally stronger greek units.Normally Frost is the better choice over Bragi to secure a 2nd gold mine, but that is situational of course.
Example Game : HellsvsSkittlestvz.rcx
You want to RC spam always, doesn't matter high hunt or low hunt. RC spam is very effective because with cheaper armory upgrades, they are more pop effective than Poseidon's hippikons and very good vs Hades' archers. With a good heroic time after the RC spam, while raiding, this should be an easy win for Thor. Example Game:HellsVsSkittles1hrlong.rcx
Against Greeks on water, you should aim for a early advance probably 4:30ish because your economy can sustain a constant flow of ships earlier than they can. Instead of building 2 docks, only build 1 and instead of sending more than 7 to wood, start AQing dwarves earlier to herdables for a faster advance.
Im not going to put high hunt or low hunt because you should be aiming to do the same thing on both vs atlanteans, which is raid him(as idle time for atlantean hurts their economy more than any other civ) while making a variety of units to counter his. Your variety of soft counters defeats Attys variety of strong counters. As long as you can survive the 1st 10 minutes against atlantean you will most often win the game due to Atty's horrible lategame and Thor's very strong one.
On water, do same strategy as vs Greeks. Example Game on water:vs mahi3.rcx
You can 1 of 2 things: Ulfsark rush if map is open and your opponents hunt or gold is forward or RC spam. Go 7-4-4 if you want to ulfsark rush(simplest BO in game) and make your temple forward. Your goal is to push your opponent into starvation and outspamming him early. On closed maps you want to RC spam, because closed maps are often a death sentence to rushs because of choke points with your opponents TA. Use the 4:15 build order above for it.
Always RC spam because they cost less food than other units, allowing for a better flow of villagers from your TC.Just make sure you raid effectively and dont lose too many RC to tc/tower fire or your opponent's attempts at trapping your raiders.
Go baldr 99% of time. Rag is OP. Dont care if its lame. So is max tower and migdol.If your opponent responds to rag by saying "you lame". Say "Yes, I do , and now i am 30 pts higher and you are 30 pts lower".
If you learn to use Thor, I can insure you the level of fun you will be having on this game will higher as well as your rating. He can do so many exciting strategies. I hope you liked the guide, as I put a good amount time and effort into
.For AoMH - Sorry this was originally posted for AoTP, so the BB code may be a little off and the rec attachments wont be posted, but you can always find them at AoTP.
