Thor/Strategy

Although the Norse are generally considered weak in the economic department, Thor's economic power should not be underestimated.

Strengths
All of his bonuses boost the player's economy, even if not directly. His most obvious bonus is the ability to build a Dwarven Foundry instead of an Armory. This building costs half as much as a normal Armory and can be built in the Archaic Age. Its technologies are cheaper, can be researched without any Age restrictions and, most impressively, provides a fourth line of technologies that are exclusive to Thor. This has the obvious benefit of making human soldiers stronger almost throughout the game, but can also benefit the player's economy by allowing them to focus less of their population on military and more on economy.

Thor also provides economic bonuses, focusing on dwarves. Thor players start with two dwarves instead of gatherers, and their dwarves are cheaper. Thor's dwarves gather food as fast as gatherers and wood only slightly slower; this is in addition to their ability to mine gold more quickly. If they start the game mostly mining gold instead of gathering food, it is plausible for a Thor player to build their economy based on dwarves rather than gatherers. The Dwarven Mine god power can facilitate this strategy, or more generally be used as a safe source of gold. Thor's myth technology, Pig Sticker, improves hunting which can be a useful benefit on some maps.

Weaknesses
The fourth line of upgrades available at Thor's Dwarven Foundry are expensive and require previous technologies to be researched first. For their soldiers to be as strong as possible, players will need to invest a lot of resources. Although the cost of dwarves is reduced, they still take slightly longer to train than Gatherers and remain more expensive. Under certain circumstances, such as when there is a shortage of safe gold mines, dwarves will not be able to entirely replace Gatherers as the main means of collecting resources. Finally, the Dwarven Mine god power can unintentionally aid the enemy should they are able to gather from one cast in an undefended location.