posted 17 April 2004 10:39 PM EDT (US)
Thor 1. Starts with 2 dwarves instead of 2 gatherers. God Power: Dwarven Mine. Technology: Pig Sticker. Villagers have +5 attack vs animals, gather food from hunting 10% faster. How to use the bonuses 1. Starting with 2 dwarves 2. Dwarves cost 60 gold instead of 70 gold 3. Dwarves gather all other resources at about the same speed as gatheres instead of 20% less. 4. Armory available in the archaic age 5. Armory has no age restrictions for research 6. An extra line of armory techs 7. Armory techs cost less. Basically here it is 8. Armory is 75 wood cheaper Godpower: Dwarven Mine Myth Tech: Pigsticker Classical: Forsetti or Freyja Forsetti: Hamarrtroll Trolls: +50% HP, +2 range, +20% attack Hall of Thanes: Hersir +10% HP and speed Mithril Breastplate: Ulfsarks have -10% hack damage vulnerability Myth Unit: Troll God power: Healing Spring Frejya Aurora Borealis: Valkyrie +50% hack damage, +20% crush damage, +33% healing rate Thundering Hooves: Cavalry +10% speed, +10% HP. Valkyrie +20% speed, +10% HP Myth unit: Valkyrie God Power: Forest Fire THE CHOICE: go forsetti against fellow norse and spam trolls. Against greek go Freyja for forest fire. Against eggy Forsetti. The troll is a pierce attack unit that isn't countered by slingers which makes it very good and killing their wood gatherers with forest fire isn't very good since eggy won't have a lot of people on wood. Against attie go freyja for uber raiding. Heroic: Bragi or Skadi Bragi Call of Valhalla: Ulfsarks +20% HP Swine Array: Ulfsark have damage x2 vs Cavalry Thurisaz Rune: All myth units move 12% faster Myth Unit: Battle Boar God Power: Flaming Weapons Skadi Huntress Axe: Throwing Axeman have 20% more attack Winter Harvest: Farmers gather food from farms 20% faster Rime: Frost Giants have 33% more HP, 20% more attack, and special attack recharges 25% faster Myth Unit: Frost giant God Power: Frost THE CHOICE: Go skadi against possy and zeus if they went hermes and go skadi on low food maps like oasis. Otherwise go bragi. Mythic Age: Tyr or Baldr Tyr Berserkergang: Ulfsarks have 20% more HP and 10% more attack Bravery: Huskarls have +20% attack and do damage x1.5 vs buildings. Myth Unit: Fenris Wolf Brood God Power: Fimbulwinter Baldr Sons of Sleipnir: Raiding Cavalry have their bonus damage increased to x3.25 vs Archers and x 3.75 vs Throwing Axemen. Dwarven Auger: Portable Rams train 50% faster, have +20% attack and speed Arctic Gale: Dragon Boats +20% speed, -30% hack vulnerability Myth Unit: Fire Giant God Power: Ragnarok THE CHOICE: I would go Tyr if you don't think the game will last to the titan age or if you want to win back the water. If the game looks like its gonna go for the long haul then go baldr. 1. Ulfsark flood Wow with this strat i managed to have 15 ulfs by 6:45 minutes even though i played horribly, had idle tc time and wasn't making ulfs all the time when i actually could have. By 8:30 i had 32 guys in my army that were all upgraded with the whole copper line and the second attack upgrade. This strategy works extremely well. Best used against: Norse, atlanteans 2. Classical fighting 3. Fast heroic 4. Balanced Thor Build This is my favorite strategy as Thor and i have an incredible Build Order that is just too good to be true. Please note that this build order can also be used for any other strategy as well. Best against: all 5. One unit rush 7. Fast mythic: What strat is best to use vs which god Thor on water: Just do a regular two dock build. Eliminate any idle tc time that is likely on water maps by using dwarves. You put down the dwarven mine and are able to pump out vills from the tc (they cost gold not food) while doing the same at the dock. This means almost no idle time which is invaluable on water. You have to beat them before heroic because you don't get any water MU's in heroic. Anways you could use Flaming weapons on water to win in heroic if you got really desparate. If you've lost the water on medit and you're in mythic take it back with jormund elvers. Another thing to note is that Thor can get burning pitch right away on a water map. Get it and you'll have a major advantage. Heres a good build order on water Random thor notes: Well that's it. I wrote this over a long period of time so i hope you guys like it. I also hope more people start using thor because of this. [This message has been edited by lessthanjakeman9 (edited 04-24-2004 @ 10:47 AM).]
Bonuses:
2. Dwarves cost 10 less gold,
3. Dwarves gather food at the same rate as regular villagers, gather wood only slightly slower. (Regular dwarves gather food and wood 20% slower.)
4. Can build Dwarven Foundry instead of Armory. Dwarven Foundry is available in the first age
5. Armory has no age restriction on tech research.
6. Armory has three more techs than the regular armory.
7. Dwarven Foundry technologies cost less gold.
8. Dwarven Foundrys cost half that of a normal armory
Creates a gold mine at any location specified by the player. The gold mine holds more gold if cast in later ages.
This is quite useful since all-in-all Thor dwarves are better than gatherers. The best way to use this bonus is to put your Dwarven Mine right near your TC and have your first two dwarves gather from that. This way you don't have to spend the resources for another ox cart until farther on in the game where resources aren't as tight. With these first two dwarves on gold you should have a pretty steady income of gold with which to make more dwarves. If you want to go all-dwarf you should probably put 2-3 more dwarves on gold then you won't have to worry about gold for a long time. I would rather have 2 dwarves than 2 gatherers for two reasons. One is that if you put them on gold you will have a much more potent source of income at the start of the game then if you were putting gatherers on food. With this crazy gold income, you can pump out more dwarves resulting in a faster classical time with 20% more gold. This is meant as a bonus so it's best to put the dwarves on gold because its not a bonus if you put them on food. For example with hunting dogs, a regular gatherer would gather hunting at 0.949 food per second. The Thor dwarf will be getting 1.09 gold per second. That's a .05 per second difference in how much resources you get per second at the very start of the game. Also hunting dogs takes 20 sec to research so for that 20 sec the gatherers will only be getting .73 food per second. By putting the dwarves on gold you also do away with those 20 sec where hunting dogs isn't taking effect since you're not hunting right away, so if you still research it right away by the time the next vill/dwarf comes out and gets to the food it'll be researched already. This means about 10-15 extra food early on. Not much, no, but still its good to have it. Having your dwarves on gold also gives you more time to scout and asess whether you need husbandry or hunting dogs. All in all it just makes for an easier and faster start to your game.
As Thor, it is usually good to have a lot of dwarves to allow for fast advancement and to generally just get villagers if you're low on food. Thor is the civ that is most able to have no idle tc time because of this. Sure they take 2 more seconds to build, but they are basically the same at gathering all resources (.03 worse at farming and .09 worse at wood) except they are 20% better at gathering gold which makes them a better unit. A lot of people say that thor dwarves are not good because they are horrible in the late game. This is because, although they have a higher rate of gathering than regular dwarves, they gain the same upgrade for the resources. Since regular dwarves aren't good with the other resources, a 10% upgrade from 20% lower isnt that good. For instance, a .7 gathering rate given a 10% upgrade turns into .77 a gain of .07. A .5 gathering rate with a 10% upgrade is .55 which only adds .05. In the same way, they also gain more from gold upgrades because they are already better at it. So i suggest using dwarves early, then later in the game switching to gatherers and moving all your dwarves to gold. This allows you to advance earlier than everyone but still have just as good of a late game eco. Anyways now that i've settled it that it's a sound tactic to use a lot of dwarves, i will now delve into the -10 gold cost. Let's say you make 15 dwarves in archaic (which would get you a 5 minute classical). You've already saved 150 gold. This is important because an all dwarf build is very gold intensive. Yes dwarves gather gold fast, easing the pressure on your gold reserves, but this bonus really helps a lot. Basically, you can have the gold to make 5 more ulfs than you would normally have had. Of course you need the extra food to do that, but what else are you using your food for. Nothing, since you are making dwarves. It also helps that you have pigsticker (although it further hampers your gold), so that if you need any food you can get it very fast. It's very average to have about 25 dwarves made in one game. Thats 250 gold saved and probably even more since you may have had idle tc time without the bonus. It also makes dwarves cheaper than gatherers. Food gathers slower than go, so with no upgrades getting 50 food takes 2 more seconds than getting 60 gold. Thats not too shabby.
This bonus is the heart and soul of Thor. This basically can mean two things. One is that you can make all dwarves and still have just as good of an eco (read above for my thought on dwarves in the late game) as with gatherers on wood and food and dwarves on gold. Some people may argue that dwarves are slightly worse at farming and wood gathering. While this is true, going all dwarf insures you the full 20% more gold. Its very rare to see an Odin or Loki player have all dwarves on gold. This is because their eco is based on getting gatherers, not dwarves. So the fact that Thor dwarves gather other resources ever so slightly slower is more than made up for by the fact that other norse players will not have all dwarves on gold. This means that they will probably only be gaining 15% more gold than a normal all gatherer eco, whereas Thor will have the full extra 20%. Other people say that all dwarf is bad simply because it takes 2 seconds longer to make a dwarf. This means that a regular player could have roughly two more vills than an all dwarf player before going to classical. Well this could probably make up for the 20% extra gold but he still has to pay for those villagers its not just free vils. So all in all the dwarf build ends up ahead again. Of course you may be saying that another norse player that is making mostly gatherers can probably make 1 more vil (they will have lost some time by making some dwarves but not all dwarves) but still have the extra gold from having dwarves on gold. To that i say two things. One the Thor player will still have more gold because its doubtful that the norse player will have all dwarves on gold. Two, the all dwarf build simply gets you to classical a good 30 seconds quicker. So the Thor player can get to classical 30 seconds faster, then make 2 more vils in those 30 seconds allowing him to equal his opponents vils while having made a lot more units early on.
The other major way to use the better dwarves is to make them when you dont have any food. Put your first two dwarves on gold then your next 4 gatherers on food. Sure you'll have a slower food intake but you'll be able to make dwarves during those times. With this bonus he can send the dwarves anywhere; you aren't just stuck sending them to gold even if you need food. For instance, if you didn't notice your food source expired and you had no food you could still make dwarves. Other norse can do that too, BUT at that time you need food fast so you can send the dwarf to food and he'll be much more effective than another civs dwarves. This is invaluable from a value standpoint and you end up not stressing out if you are out of food as much as you would with another civ. Another advantage of this bonus is that you can queue up a larger amount of vills since you can queue up gatherers and dwarves using your food and gold (I'm talking about vanilla here). This allows you to not have to worry about queueing up more vills all the time or having to send the dwarves you've queued up to gold (which means less micro on your eco and more on your army) Basically this bonus is very good if you are running low on food but don't want any idle tc time. You can send your dwarves anywhere which makes your eco a lot stronger because if every time you were low on food you made a dwarf and sent it to gold, you'd have way too much gold and not enough other resources. With Thor you dont have to resort to that. I personally do almost all dwarf in archaic then the first 2-3 vills in classical are dwarves, then after that I only use them when I am low on food.
This is not that big of a bonus but can make a difference in certain games. There are basically two ways this benifits you. The first one is if you are going for a good classical army. You can get the armory up during the transition, meaning that if you want to immediately get an upgrade (for instance, pierce armor, for ulfs) you don't have to wait 30 seconds for it to be made. The other main use of this is when you fast heroic. When you fast heroic, you will probably only have an ulf and possibly another hersir to build with. If you can only build the armory during classical you must wait for it to build before you advance. With the armory available in archaic, you can make it during the transition allowing you to advance 20-30 seconds earlier. This of course is only good if you have such a good eco that the second you get to classical you can get to heroic, which is slightly rare. All the same, I usually end up waiting for my armory to be built if I'm fast heroicing with any other norse civ. The faster you get to heroic the faster you can start building units. This bonus alone makes Thor one of the fastest fast heroic civs, a good 15 seconds faster than the other norse.
This is another big, important bonus for Thor. Basically Thor can research any armory tech in any age. This can be used to research techs during the transition to classical if you foresee a really early battle. Having an extra tech during the first clash can make or break a game. This can also be used to just generally make your units better than his. If i have all the heroic techs, and your army of equal size only has the classical techs, my army will win easily. For an enemy to equal your classical army, he has to spend a load of resources to get to heroic. This hurts him and makes him very susceptible to a rush. On the other hand, if he doesn't go to heroic your units are going to win every battle. Sure the techs cost a lot (even with his cheaper ones which i'll talk about later) but once you raid them and everything you'll be at full pop, so you wont have anything to use your res for. Even if you do get in an early clash, your army will win cause of the techs (hopefully with Thors ability to make vills from gold and food you'll be able to make units non-stop and upgrade them at the same time) which will save you resources by not having to replace as many units as you would. Once they are paid for early, you pretty much have an unstoppable army unless he loses the resources and vill time to go to heroic. And if he does that you'll fight his army and be able to reinforce, whereas he won't reinforce since he'll have used up all his res to go to heroic. Another good way to use this bonus is to make one of your units uncounterable. Basically take raiding cavalry for instance. They get killed by infantry. So what you do is you upgrade their hack armor up to maximum. This will make your RC perform very well vs infantry, and even cavalry. Still only a super astute enemy would notice what you did, and he'd still keep sending infantry at you and you'd keep killing it. This also works very well for ulfs and even throwing axemen. By doing this you'll be very hard to beat unless he outmasses you. However, you can't take any old unit and do this. You have to think. You want to use the unit that your enemy has no hard counter for. For instance, you don't want to mass pierce armored ulfs vs eggy because axemen will still kill them. Instead, you want to mass hack armored raiding cavalry. He'll make spearmen, but your RC will have like 30-40% hack armor, making it uncounterable. Versus greek its probably best to use throwing axemen with uber piere armor. They will kill off any infantry and cavalry (because they do hack damage) and wont be too hurt by toxotes. Against norse its good to make uber hack armor rc or ulfs. Throwing axemen dont counter ulfs too well as it is because of their speed, and with uber hack armor nothing will stop them. Rc are also good because with uber hack armor neither ta nor ulfs will stand a chance. Against atlanteans uber pierce armor ulfs are the best. He'll mass cheiroballista, but your ulfs will have 30-40% pierce armor, which combined with their speed will make them uncounterable. Another way to use this bonus is while booming. If your opponent booms as well you'll both be in heroic with a load of resources. You will have the ability to have more armory techs, which as usual will make a huge difference. This is Thors main military bonus, USE IT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE by getting lots of techs very early. Also another thing to note is that getting burning pitch early on in a water game gives you a huge advantage.
This bonus makes thor the only norse that is a force to be reckoned with in the late game. It is also good early on. Basically this bonus is useful for two reasons. The most obvious is when you are in the mythic age. In mythic resources are plentiful and the game becomes a matter of wearing the enemy down slowly by getting wins in battle which is hard since you are both popped out with reinforcements coming all the time during battle. By getting the extra line thors army is 20% better than his opponents. This is because he will do 10% more with each attack and take 10% less from each attack. This usually has a snowball effect during battle and can mean winning a battle in a blowout. In mythic this means he should just about win every battle against an evenly matched opponent. And since mythic is all about winning battles and slowly wearing him down thor is ideal for the late game. The extra line can also be used for what i was talking about earlier. By giving your main unit a whole extra line of techs with which to make himself uncounterable you truly do make your unit uncounterable. For instance a fully upgraded ulfsark will gain i think 7 or 8% pierce armor with that last upgrade. This is better than you think. For instance normally 10rc vs 10hops results in a victory with about 6 hops left. Now with every single regular hack armor tech teh rc win with 2 left. With thors extra hack armor tech added on 4 rc live. Now hops counter rc quite well but with all teh extra hack armor rc beat them cost and pop effectively. That last tech is waht really makes this strat great. Otherwise the unit would pretty much be equal with its opponent (the opponent will usually have one armory tech line researched). With the extra techs the strat actually reaches a poitn where your unit BEATS its counter.
* In classical the cost of the techs are lowered by 50 for each resource for each individual tech. This means it saves you 100 food 150 gold and 50 wood.
* In heroic the costs for each resource for every tech is lowered by 100. So it saves you 200 food 300 gold and 100 wood if you research every line.
* In mythic the costs for each one is lowered in the same way as in heroic saving you 200 food 300 gold and 100 wood.
* Thors special techs also benifit from this although you cant see it. They are cheaper than any other civs mythic age armory techs.
Basically by the time you have researched all the techs up to mythic you've saved 2/3 of that needed to get the extra techs. While you could say that this saved you resources, it also does a lot more. Since they are cheaper you can get them earlier and still be able to be making an army. I find that i end up not getting many armory techs as other civs since its hard to afford if you're making units and vills. His techs are easier to get earlier. This means that a Thor player will undoubtedly have the advantage right after he has researched the first line of techs since, his enemy will either not have them or have a smaller army because he has them. The thor player will have the techs and a bigger army. For instance you can make 2 ulfs and 1 ta with the money saved from just the classical techs being cheaper. That means that either your enemy wont have the techs as early as you and if you attack right after you get them you'll win OR your army will have 2 more ulfs and 1 more throwing axeman again resulting in a win.
This fuels the bonus of getting the armory earlier. The armory costing only 75 wood means that you can actually get it in archaic. This allows for a faster fast heroic. It also just generally saves you 75 wood. I usually find that i dont bother to make an armory a until later in the game with other civs, since i don't have the resources to waste on building it. This makes it very affordable resulting in the ability to churn out the upgrades that are already cheaper. Also the 75 wood can be put back in and almost pay the whole wood cost for the first pierce armor upgrade. This just complements the other armory bonuses, making it easier to get them.
Creates a gold mine at the location specified by the player. The amount of gold held by the mine differs according to the age you cast it in. In the Archaic Age: 500 gold. Classical Age: 1000 gold. Heroic Age: 3000 gold. Mythic age: 6000 gold.
There are two main uses for this. One of them is to plop it down next to your tc right away. This saves you the resources for an ox cart so early and makes less walking time to the gathering site. Very good for an all-dwarf build but if you're not going all dwarf build save it. When you save it you can use it as a free gold spot. If your opponent is strangling your gold you can use it to get you gold as you fight your way out and gain control of more gold. Its also good if there is no more gold left seeing as you get an extra 6000 more gold to gather from than your opponent.
Villagers have +5 attack vs animals, gather food from hunting 10% faster.
This obviously is a great tech to use on a heavy hunting map, making you even economically with Odin . Also on maps like watering hole you can use the extra attack to your advantage. You can get it early allowing yourself to start hunting stuff like elephants that normally you'd have to wait for. The only problem is that you need 1 favor for it. So start by hunting some deer and then get pigsticker once you've killed enough to get favor. Either that or take a few hacks at his scout with our scout. Either way you can still hunt big game earlier and will have less deaths from them. I think that this is the best archaic myth tech there is.
MINOR GODS
Technologies
Decent tech if you are massing trolls against a fellow norse. Only get it once you have 4 or 5 trolls though, as it's better to get another troll before that.
Really useful for Loki but not as much for Thor. Good to get your hersirs the speed to go around and hit the MU's with a bit of added power. Still only get it if your enemy is going really heavy on MU's (like against the centaur strangle or the minotaur rush)
Very good tech when against a fellow norse player. Add this to your crazy armory hack armor upgrading and you have an unstoppable unit. I would only use it against norse though because its not essential when you have units that counter you, but have pierce attack. Of course if you're going for uber ulfs this could also be good.
I personally dont like this MU that much. Its main use is vs other norse. It does pierce attack which other norse players may not upgrade for. Its also a very good ranged Mu killer. All in all its a good MU but only in certain situations. Make sure you use it vs the right civs too. It's very good against Zeus since it really hurts his low pierce armor hoplites. Against a poseidon player it may not be as good because he'll be massing hippikons who have high pierce armor.
Heals your guys at 2.5 hp per second when near it. Great to heal your raiders and to heal after your army retreats. Its not a powerful GP but its quite easy to make good use out of it. Basically its like a permanent resoration. It makes your raiding that much more potent and stops you from having an army of all near death guys which i can tell you is not good. Again not powerful but i like it.
Technologies:
A good tech if you have 3 or more valks. Since you dont have healing spring you really want to have some good healing for your raids. So i like that the part of it the best. The other ones make a difference but i usually dont have enough valks for extra attack to pay for the tech.
Great tech if you plan on raiding. It basically makes your rc and valks raiding machines. They can get in there faster and get out faster and with higher hp significantly fewer rc will die in raids. This tech also makes valks one of the fastest units in the game. I like to use the valk to go right across his base near the tc and in doing so ill find a lot of his gathering operations. With this tech nothing can catch it and it will be hit less by the tc. Very important tech to get if you plan on raiding. It's also worth noting that when in heroic this upgrades your jarls too. So if you are doing a fast heroic this tech is very important.
Very fast cavalry MU that can heal units. I usually make
2-3 of these in a game. I raid with them on one side and with my rc on another. Then i retreat back to the same place, heal and repeat. This makes for killer raiding. The group of rc should also be backed with one valkyrie to increase their LOS, which really increases raiding ability. I also use their speed and pierce armor to go near the tc and find what they are doing within its range allowing me to find out what they are must be doing outside of it. Its important to make at least two of them if youre going to make any because they heal eachother. Its much better than the troll in most games. I find it to be the best raider in the game.
I never used to like this GP until the last game i played. Basically find his wood operations, cast forest fire and trap his vils in with your rc. In the game i played i killed every single wood vil (7 or 8 i cant remember) he had by doing this. It also took down a house and an armory. This is the best against greek. You take out his wood within tower range so hes without it for a while which hurts. He also has to go outside tower range now where he will be raided to death by your valks and rc.
Technologies:
Very good tech. Used to get uber ulfsarks. If you use the Thor armory correctly you can make your ulfs uncounterable and this just reinforces it since it adds somewhere between 16 and 20 hp. great tech
I personally think this is one of the best techs in the game. It really makes ulfs a hard counter to cavalry. But they still stand up to other units, especially if you use your armory right and upgrade the right armor. Basically if you get Bragi's two techs and you have upgraded your armory a lot ulfs can become the best unit in the game which is pretty amazing since they aren't very good to begin with.
I don't research this tech. I guess its good if you have a load of valks and want them to be even faster. I still dont recomend getting this tech though. It would be good if you could get this tech and still make some giants since giants speed is their weakness. However you can't get frost giants or mountain giants if you go bragi and fire giants aren't in as much need of speed since they are ranged.
Best MU in the game. Its special is great for stunning a load of archers (its basically a mini shockwave gp) and it is great vs buildings and units alike. It lasts a long time and can turn the tide of almost any battle.
Best GP in the game. It makes all your units on the battlefield (unlike bronze) have 2x attack multiplier. Basically you can win any battle with it and destroy any base with it in a matter of seconds. A great combo is to use ragnarok and flaming weapons. Makes your army almost unbeatable and is a game ender 98% of the time. The only problem is that the god power can be countered by ceasefire. To offset this a bit use FW then use fimbulwinter right away to stop ceasefire. 
Technologies:
Basically adds 1 attack to your TA. If you decided to upgrade your TA at the Thor armory (useful vs any civ) then this is a great tech. I usually get this tech even if TA are only in a support role because otherwise they aren't that good of a unit.
I love this tech. Great on maps with little food like oasis. It makes you gather from farms at .793 per second. Thats faster than herd animals! Its even faster than hunting without hunting dogs. When i start getting a lot of farms i immediately get this tech and i never have food problems again (with other civs i am always low on food once i start farming)
One of the better MU techs. If you have 3 frost giants get this tech. Its capitalizes on the frost giants advantage of his special. It also just makes him way more of a tank and gives him much better attack.
Quite good. Has a great special that freezes units for a while. Because of this try to aim the special on myth units or units with a lot of attack. This unit is slow but still faster than other giants. Still with not very good pathing you want to have your frost giant at the front when a battle comes so that he'll actually end up fighting. Frost giants are also great for killing seige. They can freeze them rendering the seige useless then kill them with their hack attack. (thanks to VAL_the speaker for telling me about that)
I love this GP possibly more than flaming weapons. There are three main uses for it
1. If your base is surprise attacked or you are raided heavily you can frost his army and get your army back there. Also good as a sort of ceasefire allowing you time to make more units to combat this attack
2. If an opponent is making a tc frost his army guarding the building of it, break it down and build one or yours on top of it. Then you will win the battle that ensues because you will have the tc firing on them.
3. Run into his base, frost his army and completely demolish the base.
The only thing that makes worse than FW is that its harder to find a way to use it in a game. But its still pretty easy and it cant be countered by ceasefire as easily.
Technologies:
Basically this just adds to your bragi ulfs and makes them quite unstoppable. Only get this tech if you've gone bragi though since there's not much point in massing ulfs otherwise. If you have ulfs in a support role it's still useful to get the tech, but it's not a priority.
Huskarls are one of the best all around units in the game. Get this tech, mass husks and watch yourself win. That's how good this tech is. I love it.
Regular, above average unit except when massed get huge bonuses. If you've been doing a lot of fighting, have a lot of favor and have stable market trade going mass these. 10 of them can completely kill any base before his army gets back. Only get them if you know you'll have enough resources to mass them though.
Myth Unit: Jormond Brood
Great water MU. I saw a game where salska won back the water solely with these things.
Great for wrecking his eco. Even if he gets his vils in towers a few will die before they do get there and the wolves will down the towers and kill the rest. Very good gp but you must not let him recover you must attack him right afterwards. Better yet attack him then mid battle cast it. He will have to choose between microing the battle or his vils resulting in a major advantage. For instance he'll probably go back and micro his vills so you can run away and watch his units come at you single file and kill them.
Technologies:
Great tech. Get it if you massed rc or even if you didnt because he's not gonna make archers if he sees you've massed rc. So make ulfs and once they die replace them all with rc with this tech and watch them win.
Very useful vs turtlers. You can just churn out rams like there's no tomorrow. Its very hard to stop a few fully upgraded rams with this tech. Don't get it if your opponent isn't a turtle though.
If there is still fighting on water use this to end the fighting. Ive never had a water game go this late so i don't know how good it is. It sounds like it could win you the water pretty handily though. Just mass some dragon boats, and if the enemy doesn't have naval MU's there nothing much that can beat you.
Great ranged MU. Make 2-3 of them and you've got a great support weapon. They are also great against buidings. They kind of have the gastraphetes thing going where they can kill units really well and kill buildings really well. I personally value them a lot and make them whenever i can. However they are rather expensive so i usually only get them when i have a good amount of trade going.
Game ender right here! Great in the x-pack for taking out titans super quick. When used with FW you can win any game. This is basically an unstoppable combo. Its also great for making a titan gate super quick. All in all a great gp. It is risky though and you should queue up loads of vills from all your tc's after you do this in case your attack is beaten back.
Thor strategies:
Go to classical extremely early with a lot of vills/dwarves on food. Then spam ulfsarks. You must make dwarves while you are spamming if you hope to have enough food. Ulfsarks take only 9 seconds to build so with 3 longhouses building them you can have 15 ulfs by 6:15 pretty easily. Attack them at that point. Take down their few military buildings. Then split your force. Have one take out towers and another seek out villagers. Then keep flooding ulfs in while getting some armory upgrades (get 1 or 2 pierce upgrades to save you from towers) Then start making the counter to their counter of ulfs. For instance tox counter ulfs so start making raiding cavalry. Once he starts making the counter retreat and bring up your reserve that counters that unit. Keep flooding them and upgrading your ulfs. Most of the time with an attack this early they stand little chance. Once you have sufficiently stopped anything they may have go heroic and use flaming weapons to finish them off. Yes its just as easy to counter the ulf flood as it is a loki rush but people wont expect this so it will be harder to counter. Its also useful to use the ulfsark flood without a forward base to defend against rushers like Loki.
COUNTER: make anti infantry and make MU's that give pierce damage.
COUNTER TO THE COUNTER: bring your hersirs. Most people wont know to make anti-infantry against Thor since he has so many different strategys. They will only know if they scout you out well and find your army. So what you must do is keep your ulfs out of the way while you build them up. Onnly let them see your other units.
Get to classical around the 5 minute mark. Make about 10-15 raiding cavalry and raid them. Get some valkyries to heal your units and raid. Once you have like 12 rc split them into two groups and raid both sides at once. When you find his wood operation use forest fire and trap the vills in with your rc, hopefully killing 5-8 vills. Just keep the pressure up while still making TA and RC. Slowly expand your base with towers and other buildings. Try to lure their forces off to battle under tower fire. With a lesser eco from your raids he won't be able to get his units back as fast. Anways at about 9-11 minutes when you feel his eco is dead just attack him with your army. This should be enough to win. Its pretty straightforward but is very effective. If the opponent is especially hard to beat, then go to heroic and use one of the awesome gp's on them.
Best used against: greek and eggy
COUNTER: put anti cav near all your gathering sites
COUNTER TO THE COUNTER: make an all out attack on his base. If he has guys at all his gathering sites then his whole army wont be there to stop you until you've done a load of damgae.
With dwarves it can be very easy to stockpile food to get to heroic rather quickly. Don't rely on all dwarves though because they take longer to build. Build the armory during the transition to classical. Once you get to heroic spam hill forts and huskarls. If even slighly upgraded (which as thor they should be upgraded hugely) husks are almost unstoppable. Against eggy spam jarls instead because of axemen (although if they FH too then go husks) and make a mix vs norse. Raid with your free valkyrie. Take all the tc's first (in vanilla). Once you feel your hill forts protect your base and your units are all upgraded a lot attack their base. Thor heroic units are awesome. When backed with some rams you have an awesome army. Use your heroic gp rather early to regain your footing since he'll undoubtedly have a larger army than you. With larger pop, more upgrades, and loads of tc's pumping out vills you should should be able to win rather handily since its hard to get through spammed hill forts to take out your tc's. In this instance its good to keep dwarven mine so that you can use it if he denies you gold before you get to heroic. Go to mythic with baldr if the game is even and go tyr if you're about to win since bravery can really help your husks.
Best used against: greeks, eggy
COUNTER: Raid them early and try to asess whether they are FHing. If you think they are then all out attack them
COUNTER TO THE COUNTER: upgrade towers with crenellations and maybe get a few ulfs or hersir to guard your gathering operations.
Basically this involves a reasonably fast classical and making 10-15 RC and 10-15 TA. Mix in a few valks or trolls. Raid them with your rc that are split into two groups to allow you to hit them at both sides at once. Use healing spring or forest fire to aid your raiding. Upgrade your rc's hack armor heavily. Keep the infantry that you make back to stop your opponents raids. Keep raiding them heavily. At about 12-14 minutes go to heroic and get a load of hill forts and tc's. Make as many heroic units as you can while booming out of your extra tc's. When you make your main attack with a full popped, upgraded army use your heroic gp. This should overwhelm them and you should gain a victory. If it doesn't go to mythic and finish them off with ragnorok/titan.
-First 2 dwarves to dwarven mine near tc
-next 5 gatherers to food. Get hunting dogs and pigsticker as soon as possible if there is any hunting
-2 gatherers + ox cart to wood
-1 dwarf to gold
-2 dwarves to food
-3 gatherers to wood
-2 dwarves + ox cart to gold
Advance to classical
After that i just improvise.
Anyways this build order can allows me to get to classical before 5 minutes, have 3 rax pumping out units non stop (also with the temple making a few valks) as well as no idle tc time. I can get the whole first copper line and medium cav upgrade at about 8-9 minutes and start getting the next line of armory techs before i go to heroic with full pop. I get to heroic between 12-14 minutes with enough wood and gold to put up 2 tcs right away and a hill fort or two right after that. Then i attack with a full 3 tc pop army using flaming weapons and destroy them.
COUNTER: get to classical before them (which is hard because if you're a fast civ like Loki the Thor player will just go faster than you because of dwarves) Raid them very early then build up a full pop army around 10 minutes and attack them while they are saving for heroic.
COUNTER TO THE COUNTER: upgrade your towers. If against a fast civ then get to classical before 5 minutes. Upgrade your guys hugely so as to beat his larger army around 10 minutes. You should have a lot of favor from heavy raiding so make a lot of trolls if against norse and a lot of valks if against anyone else.
This strategy revolves around Thors armory. Here's what you do. You get to classical around 5 minutes. just mass a unit that your enemy doesn't have a hard counter (gets a big multiplier) against. Then just upgrade either its hack or pierce armor depending on what type of attack the enemys soft counter is. For instance against eggy you'd mass rc because they have hard counters to ulfs and throwing axemen but not rc. Spearmen do hack damage so you'd just upgrade your hack armor like mad. The enemy will still throw his spearmen at you despite the fact that you've upgraded it up to like mythic in armor. Using this allows you to counter every unit he makes. For instance with incredible hack armor rc beats up spearmen and axemen. They already beat up slingers, so nothing will change there. Just keep massing this unit. If its rc raid them as well and if it's an infantry unit, then take out their buidings. Especially if it's ulfsarks you are using it's important to take out their outposts so they dont turn into towers that kill ulfs like knives through butter.
Best used against:eggy
COUNTER: Hit them early so that they don't get the upgrades.
COUNTER TO THE COUNTER: get an upgrade during the transition and just raid them early on as well.
Get a fast mythic using dwarves. Get tc's rather early and boom out of them. Make a small army to deal with raids and upgrade your towers and tower/hill fort spam. Then go to mythic before 14 minutes and use ragnorok+flaming weapons and its gg. Another thing you could do is get a titan really fast using ragnorok and use FW plus the titan to secure your win
best against: Gaia, eggy, hades
COUNTER: Obviously just hit them early and raid wood to stop them from tower spamming.
COUNTER TO THE COUNTER: have multiple wood spots so that they can't stop your wood income fully. Towers also cost gold but he cant stop you from getting that since you have dwarven mine.
1. Loki: Ulfsark flood so that you can actually outmass him early on.
2. Odin: Ulfsark flood because it will stop his raids (ulfs counter rc) and an early rush will stop his FH
3. Thor: your choice really since there is no 'best strat' when against your own civ
4. Isis: Fast Mythic because your ragnorok will kill her fast titan and she's not a rushing civ so he won't kill you before you get there
5. Ra: Rush him with all raiding cavalry that have uber hack armor.
6. Set: get pigsticker to stop any animal harrassement. Then just play him like hes Ra and mass hack armored raiding cavalry.
7. Poseidon: You can't rush greek so just raid him and have some ulfs back at your base to stop his raids. Then get to heroic and use the GP to win.
8. Zeus: Go forsetti and mass trolls. They should stop his hoplites AND his MU's. Have a meatshield of raiding cavalry. Then go Skadi to get huntress axe. This will make it stupid for him to use hops therefore making his main bonus void.
9. Hades: Fast Heroic: Most likely he'll FH too so you need to do the same to match his tc count (vanilla). On titans fast mythic and rag/FW him.
10. Gaia: Mass valkyries early and she has no counter. Then just go to heroic at a decent time and get huskarls which are quite good vs atlanteans.
11. Kronos: Mass ulfarks early but don't make a forward base like you usually would with mass ulfs. Keep your ulfs back to combat an early rush. Upgrade your pierce armor.
12. Oranos: Get Thundering hooves valks and rc to actually be able to catch his turmas. Then go heroic and use huskarls.
- first two dwarves on dwarven mine near tc
- next 4 gatherers to wood + an ox cart
- 2 dwarves to food
- 1 dwarf to gold
- 2 dwarves to food
- 1 gatherer to wood
- 2 dwarves to food (transfer them to wood once you have 7-8 fishing ships)
- 1 dwarf to gold or wood (gold if you are gonna build up a force on land early and wood if you arent)
With this build order there is no idle tc or dock time, you advance a bit before 5 minutes and you are able to pump out longboats nonstop from 1 dock easily if you are gonna make a land attack and two docks if you are going solely water for the moment. I like to make one dock, raid with rc use forest fire which cripples their wood supply then make a second dock and secure the water.
1. Thor has the best heroic minor gods. Their gp's are amazing and can win you the game
2. Thor has diversity on his side. No one knows what a Thor player will do unlike a Loki player. Against a Loki player everyone knows they will rush, and are taking precautions for it. Against Thor no one knows.
3. His uber units are better than anyone elses except that Odin's jarls are better than his but only slightly.
4. Pigsticker kills set animal rushes.
5. Ulfs are great when you're faced with a rush. They are made in 9 seconds so they are your only hope of outmassing an early advancing rusher.
6. Do a mixed dwarf and gatherer build unless in certain situations. One of these is if you're against a rushing civ like loki and you want to advance early. In this situation the all dwarf build probably works better. The other one is if there is no good food in your LOS. Putting your first 4-5 vills on gold allows you to scout and find the hunting before you put vills on bad food like chickens. This is especially good on ghost lake and savannah.
