The Thor Dwarf Build
By TheShadowDawn · vanilla
TheShadowDawn’s original Thor dwarf opening explains its economic premise and early development.
Thor is one of the more unique civilizations in AoM. His specialty is the dwarf buildup, a tactic that rookies and less skilled players will find very easy to learn and apply.
The Thor dwarf build does not usually result in the most powerful attack, but it has three definite advantages. First, once you learn it, it’s definitely the easiest buildup to follow through the early game. Second, the dwarf build requires very little adjustment to the map you are playing – you can play the same way no matter what resources the map generates for you – whereas a normal food oriented economy is at the mercy of the food generated by the map. Finally, the Dwarf build allows a normally slow player the opportunity to advance to the second age much faster than normal.
The Dwarf build does have the drawback that it can result in slightly less economic power than a comparable player, since in the time you produce 7 dwarves, an opponent can produce 8 villagers. The margin is small however, and the other benefits of focusing on dwarves usually outweigh this – especially if you are not yet very proficient at handling your economy.
So, why build dwarves? The premise behind the dwarf build can be explained in these basic facts:
- Food is the most important resource in the first age, but also requires the most work to get
- Dwarves cost no food, instead they cost gold, which is very easy to get at the start of the game, and
- Thor’s Dwarves are not inefficient at gathering wood and food like normal ones – so they can effectively gather them without any economic loss
So, the obvious objective of the dwarf build is to – as the name implies – build dwarves instead of gatherers. To find out exactly how to do this, head over to the next page.
As with build orders in any game, this is only a guideline. As you become familiar with the buildup, you’ll need to begin adjusting it to the circumstances the game gives you, or to what you are trying to achieve. However, this is a good place to start.
Download a sample game of this build in action (55kb)
The buildup:
Find a ‘sweetspot’ where you can gather both wood and gold and you only need 2 ox carts
- Queue two dwarves with your starting gold at the Town Center. Set the rally point to the nearest gold mine.
- Send your starting dwarves and ox-cart to the nearest gold mine. If the map allows it, you may want to send your ox-cart to a different gold mine where you can also gather wood, or better yet food. However, don’t waste any time this early in the game walking to a distant mine. Every second spent walking is a second not spent gathering.
- Consider getting the gold mining upgrade. It is not necessary for the buildup, but can be helpful. However, it requires a bit of wood, which will require some adjustments.
- Dwarves 3 and 4 join your first gold miners.
- Gatherer 1 (or Dwarf 5) At this stage you may not yet have enough gold to train another dwarf. Don’t waste precious Town Center time, queue a gatherer instead. He joins the gold miners too, however once you have a solid gold flow, take him off and have him gather food or wood instead.
- Dwarves 5 and 6 join your gold miners.
- You now have 7 units gathering gold – this should be more than enough to keep your TC in steady production. Take your gatherer and one dwarf off gold and move them to cutting wood.
- Dwarf 7 begins gathering food from chickens. (Or whatever food source is close to the TC. You don’t have a second ox cart yet, so don’t opt for hunting if it is not close by.)
- Dwarf 8 goes to chickens.
- Train an oxcart at the Town Center. (If you bought the gold mining upgrade, you will need 20 wood to buy the ox cart, which is why earlier we put two units on wood.) Have the oxcart join your food gatherers.
- Dwarf 9 goes to chickens. Now that you have an oxcart with your food gathering operation, you can consider switching to hunting – which is faster. Because we are not focusing on food, the hunting dogs upgrade is not necessary. (Hunting dogs takes a while to pay itself off – best left for games where you are reliant on hunting as your main food source. We’re not reliant on hunting in this case, it’s just convenient.)
- Around this time it would be a good idea to put up a house with your ulfsark. Try not to just place houses wherever your ulfsark is at the time – have them veer back home so that the house won’t get taken out by roving enemy units.
- Dwarf 10 to wood.
- Dwarves 11 and 13 to food.
- Dwarves 15-22 join your food gatherers. You may wish to strengthen your wood gathering along the way with a few of these, and a third ox cart may be necessary if you cannot find a sweetspot with both gold and wood.
- Around about Dwarf number 22 you should be ready to advance to Classical – you can do it earlier or later, but this is a happy medium generally, and should be an easy target to hit. Put your temple up in advance.
- Have your ulfsark place another house.
- Hit the classical button. I advise choosing Forseti – his Healing Spring god power is far more useful than Freyja’s Forest Fire, and Trolls are solid and fairly cheap myth units. (Though rather population intensive at four slots each.) Now that you’ve hit the classical button, you don’t need quite as much food. Grab a dwarf or two and shift them over to wood.
- Research the wood upgrade. If you don’t already have it, get the gold mining upgrade now too.
- Queue a hersir at the temple, then a second one when you have enough food. If there are any relics nearby that benefit you, grab them. If you have strong wood supply, it’s often an idea to place yet another house. (Once your Longhouses go up, you can get popped out very quickly as your first few units come out – this can be quite crippling if you want to attack soon after advancing.)
- As soon as you hit classical, use your ulfsark and Hersirs to lay down two Longhouses. Queue Throwing Axemen initially, and use them to help build a third Longhouse and possibly more houses.
- Try to maintain constant military production.
From here on, everything pretty much goes as you play it. I suggest focusing on Raiding Cavalry and Throwing Axemen, since this is the least food intensive and most versatile combo. You’re well geared for an attack, so go ahead once you have a few units. If you manage to attack quickly enough, you will be able to focus on military buildings and houses – he can’t stop you if he can’t build counters to what you’re using. However if he already has his buildings up, avoid his military and go for the villagers – this’ll hurt him more and hurt you less.
Don’t get the medium infantry and cavalry upgrades too early – more units is always better than more upgrades. You probably want 10+ Cav or TA’s before you upgrade them. Armor upgrades often make the difference for the Norse, since their units have good attack but relatively poor armor. As a bonus, Thor’s armory upgrades are cheaper – so try grabbing them when possible. You may even want to consider getting the heroic age armory techs too (since thor doesn’t have to wait until the third age to get third age techs!) – though they come with a hefty pricetag.
As you get further into the classical age, you’ll begin to find you need your gold for military production, and not for dwarves. Consider putting some more dwarves on gathering gold, and this would be a good time to set up farms, and begin building gatherers instead. (Remember to get the Husbandry and Plow upgrades to improve farming.)
Dwarven mine, Thor’s god power
Dwarven mine provides 500 gold when cast in the first age, 1000 when cast in the second, 3000 in the third, and 6000 in the fourth. It can be created pretty much anywhere on the map.
Dwarven mine will provide you gold for convenient mining at whatever location you choose. When should you use it? There’s a number of ways you can use it. One popular way to is to cast it right next to the town center at the start of the game. While it only provides 500 gold, it is gathered very quickly and efficiently, and you can use your ox cart for gathering food for a very fast advance to the Classical Age. I do not reccomend new players do this, but if you are more experienced at the game – go right ahead. For other players, the best time to use it is in the second or third age when you don’t have a convenient gold mine to be found. Perhaps the enemy controls the center of the map – and that’s where all the gold mines are. This will give you temporary respite.
Remember to use Dwarven mine. Don’t forget about it and never use it. 1v1 games often don’t last to the fourth age, so don’t hold onto it thinking you can get 6000 gold out of it. (Obviously if you’re in a team game, different rules apply.)
Healing spring, Forseti’s god power
Creates a Healing Spring that causes units within its range of effect to recover around 2.5 HP a second when idle. Can be captured by enemy units.
Too many people make mistakes in placing healing springs. First of all, remember that the spring is controlled by whoever has the most units in the area – plunking it down anywhere near an enemy town and an area you don’t control is a bad idea. Also remember that like all healing methods, it heals *very* slowly when your units are fighting. Don’t think you’re going to gain much by fighting around a healing spring. They only heal appreciably when idle. Put a healing spring somewhere safe – probably near your Longhouses or progressive forward base. This way your units can retreat there to meet units being produced when you lose a battle.
The Troll, Forseti’s Myth unit
With all the fighting you’ll be doing, you’ll come into favor eventually. If you chose Forseti, there’s no useful myth upgrades to be had yet, so the best way to spend it is on Trolls. Trolls are affordable myth units, fairly tough, and have more range and attack than TA’s. As an added bonus, they heal when fighting. The drawback to trolls is that they take four pop slots – the same as two throwing axemen or raiders. If you find yourself too pop constrained, you may want to forget about them.
Sacrificing power for speed
This is something Thor is very good at, but I don’t recommend it if you are still learning the game. Because Thor requires food only to advance to the second age, you can gather the necessary resources to advance exceptionally quickly. (Especially if you use your dwarven mine power early, and use the ox cart as a drop point for food.) Try building your temple offensively (in the fog in a corner near the enemy town) and using the hersir built during the age advance to attack and slow down the enemy player. Try and stop their temple going up to stop them from getting to age 2 to stop you if you can. Freyja’s Forest Fire GP can often be useful in this situation since it will often take out (or severely damage) any buildings near a forest – use it to take out houses, towers or enemy military buildings to work you further into a position of strength.
Well, that’s pretty much it! I invite you to open up AoM now and give it a try, and mess around with Thor a bit. He’s quite a fun civ to play once you get used to him.
-TheShadowDawn
Source: TheShadowDawn · HeavenGames