Guide

Introduction

Thor is the most versatile god in AoT, and is most often considered one of — if not the strongest — god choice. Because Thor is Norse, he offers an offensive mindset, but because of his specific bonuses, he wields a strong late game and many different playing styles. Few gods have the ability to have a very good early game and late game, with the ease to adapt to the opponent that Thor can.

If you are bad at Thor, either you are playing him wrong (not using his strengths properly) or you have been misinformed about how to play Thor at his full potential.

The key concepts of Thor:

• Knowing the Basics
• Raiding Effectively
• Managing an economy throughout the game
• Learning what to do against each God on each Map

If you want to get good at Thor, playing other gods all the time will not help. You have to play him a lot, gain experience with his bonuses, and learn how to abuse them to achieve victory. Thor is a complicated god and it will take a while before you know how to use him correctly, but your understanding of AoT as a whole will be far greater for it.

The Basics

When reading this guide, you should already know the names and effects of all the upgrades and god powers that Thor has. This is not a beginner's guide.

Scouting Properly

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 you want to achieve by the 15-minute mark.

Phase 1

Scout for your Town Centers, forward gold mines, second hunt pack, and your general area of the map. Don't leave random big black spots on the mini-map — always keep a watchful eye on your scout. If you pass by an area and notice 2 deer, go investigate to see if there are more in the black spot next to them.

Phase 1 usually ends when you build your temple.

Water map exception: Build your dock and house first. On Mediterranean, go down one side of the water searching for pigs, then follow the edge around to the other side. If your opponent scouted the opposite direction first, you can steal his pigs on your way around.

Phase 2

Same thing as Phase 1, except you're scouting your opponent's territory. Knowing where their forward gold or hunt is located is essential for efficient raiding, and tells you what their strategy will be. For example, if your Egyptian opponent has very forward gold, they'll have to be aggressive to avoid being gold-starved.

Using Thor's Bonuses

Armory

Not only is the armory important for any god, it becomes an even larger role when playing Thor. Since his armory is cheaper along with armor upgrades, you can get far better armor earlier than your opponent. Always get an armory as soon as you can.

Armor upgrades are generally better than line upgrades for Thor because you'll make a variety of units throughout the game, and armor benefits all of them — not just one unit type.

Dwarves

Thor's Dwarves do get a bonus on other resources, but it's not large enough to warrant a 1:1 Dwarf:Gatherer ratio. As Thor, you should usually only have Dwarves on gold unless you're in a food shortage or have an excess of gold. Always look to replace Dwarves on food/wood with Gatherers, moving those Dwarves to gold. Having a few Dwarves on each resource won't hurt, but it won't help as much as people think.

Dwarves are also cheaper, which can tempt you to make them instead of Gatherers — a common mistake.

Raiding Effectively

Raiding is a key part of winning with Thor. If you cannot raid and disrupt your opponent's eco, you will lose the game. Raiding takes up micro time from your opponent, weakens their eco through idle time, and potentially kills villagers.

Important: Effective raiding does not have to mean killing villagers! Making his villagers idle by making them run away is a raiding success too. However, you should always aim to kill villagers.

Blocking Villagers

Don't attack villagers from a random spot. Position your raiders between where the villagers are gathering and where they can escape to. Move your raiders to where the villagers are most likely to run, cutting off their escape route.

Raiding by Groups

Group raids are difficult to manage but very important. Nobody likes responding to raiders on their gold, let alone another group simultaneously raiding their woodcutters.

Instead of 1 group of 10 Raiding Cavalry, divide into 2 groups of 5 and Ctrl+group them so you always know where they are.

Most important: Don't let random raiders die or get trapped. Do as much damage to their eco without losing your own raiders. Avoid this by always keeping "one eye" on what your raiders are doing.

Managing an Efficient Economy

Thor's economy can be as strong as any god late game, as long as you know how to manage it.

Balancing Your Economy

Don't let your economy become imbalanced — 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, you can see how many villagers are on each resource. Check this periodically.

If you have excess food but little gold with 50 villagers farming and only 10 mining, create another market and start auto-queuing caravans.

Setting Up a Trade Route

Making a trade route is vital to winning late game. You will run out of gold mines. Set up trade as soon as you have the available food, and make it as long as possible for maximum gold per trip. Walling and towering your trade route is also important — if you've run out of safe mines and lose your trade, you most likely lose.

Using Ox Carts Efficiently

When mining gold, set up your ox cart to minimize walking time. The same goes for wood gathering. For farming, place farms as close to the Town Center as possible to minimize drop-off time.

Matchups

Thor vs Egyptian — High Hunt

Two strategies, both using a 5:15 advance:

• Full Raiding Cavalry — best on open maps (Savannah)
• 2 TC Semi-Fast Heroic — best on closed maps (Watering Hole)

Build Order (works for both strategies)

1. Dwarven Mine → 2 Dwarves to gold
2. 6 to food
3. 2 to wood
4. Cart to wood
5. 1 to wood
6. Ulfsark
7. 1 Dwarf to gold
8. 2 to food
9. 1 Dwarf to gold
10. Cart to gold
11. 2 to wood
12. 1 to gold

Full Raider: Get full pop with raiders, then take them off auto-queue to build a 2nd TC around 10-12 minutes. Works better vs Ra and Set than Isis (she has Ancestors to protect her forward Migdol). After Classical, auto-queue Dwarves to gold, then Gatherers to herdables.

2 TC Heroic: Stronger economy by 10 minutes. Weakness: on open maps, the Egyptian can easily be aggressive. When Classical, have 1 TC auto-queue Gatherers to herdables while the other auto-queues Dwarves to gold. Your Hersir should build longhouses and your armory. When going Heroic, queue 5-10 RC to keep your opponent busy. Jarls + Ulfsarks + Battle Boars with Flaming Weapons is very effective vs Chariots and Elephants. If expecting mass myth units, go Forseti and make more Hersir than Jarls, get Hall of Thanes tech ASAP.

Thor vs Egyptian — Low Hunt

Usually the best plan is a boom style. On low hunt, Egyptian is very dangerous with Migdol spam and Chariots. Focus on economy upgrades (get them earlier than usual), make raider groups to harass their food sources, and boom until you can afford expensive Jarls.

Thor vs Egyptian — Water

Push them off fishing so they can't achieve a good Heroic time, then use your fishing food advantage to manage a good economy and advance.

Water Build Order

1. Queue an Ulfsark. Send your free Ulfsark to build a dock
2. Put Dwarves on straggler tree. Use Dwarven Mine normally
3. Queue 4 villagers to that straggler tree. 2nd Ulfsark builds another dock (away from 1st), then a house. Start making fishing ships from 1st dock
4. You should have 3 Gatherers + 2 Dwarves on the tree. Move Dwarves to the DM
5. Move villagers to a forest after the straggler depletes
6. Continue: Dwarf to wood → Dwarf to gold → Dwarf to wood (now making ships from both docks)
7. 1 Dwarf to gold → 2 Dwarves to wood (stop one dock's ships, build temple at home)
8. Ox cart to gold mine → another Dwarf to gold
9. 1 Gatherer + 2 Dwarves to pigs

Final eco: 6-7 Dwarves on gold, 4 Gatherers + 4 Dwarves on wood, 1 Gatherer + 2 Dwarves on goats. Advance through Freyja at ~4:30. This is a hard build order that takes precision.

Note: On Anatolia, make docks on opposite sides. On Midgard, make docks on opposite corners.

Thor vs Zeus

Use the vs Egyptian high hunt build order. Usually go Forseti, as Zeus's Athena Rush is very strong vs Thor. This is probably the hardest matchup for Thor.

Keys to winning:

• Put up a good defensive while still achieving a decent Heroic time
• Secure a 2nd gold mine
• Never fight into Restoration
• Keep track of how much gold you have access to
• Make a good amount of Hersir

The later the game goes, the better Thor's chances — especially mid to late Heroic when Thor's armory techs balance out the naturally stronger Greek units. Frost is usually better than Bragi for securing a 2nd gold mine.

Thor vs Poseidon and Hades

Raiding Cavalry spam always, regardless of hunt level. 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 while raiding, this should be an easy win for Thor.

Thor vs Greeks — Water

Aim for an early advance (~4:30) because your economy can sustain a constant flow of ships earlier than theirs. Build only 1 dock instead of 2, and start auto-queuing Dwarves to herdables earlier for a faster advance instead of putting more than 7 on wood.

Thor vs Atlantean

Same approach on both high and low hunt: raid them (idle time hurts Atlantean economy more than any other civ) while making a variety of units to counter theirs. Your variety of soft counters defeats Atlantean's variety of strong counters. As long as you survive the first 10 minutes, you will most often win due to Atlantean's horrible late game and Thor's very strong one.

On water, use the same strategy as vs Greeks.

Thor vs Norse — High Hunt

Two options:

• Ulfsark rush (if map is open and opponent's hunt/gold is forward): Go 7-4-4 (simplest BO in the game) and build your temple forward. Push your opponent into starvation and outspam him early.
• RC spam (on closed maps): Closed maps are often a death sentence for rushes because of choke points. Use the 4:15 build order above.

Thor vs Norse — Low Hunt

Always RC spam because they cost less food than other units, allowing for a better flow of villagers from your TC. Make sure you raid effectively and don't lose too many RC to TC/tower fire.

Ending Thoughts

Go Baldr 99% of the time. Ragnarok is overpowered. Don't care if it's lame — so is max tower and Migdol spam.

If you learn to use Thor, I can assure you the level of fun you'll be having will be higher, as well as your rating. He can do so many exciting strategies. I hope you liked the guide!