Norse

For the other use of Norse featured in Age of Empires II, see here.

The Norse are a civilization featured in both Age of Mythology and The Titans expansion.

Gods
The Major Gods for the Norse are:
 * Thor
 * Odin
 * Loki

Resource Gathering
The norse are unique from other civilizations in the way that that they have two villager units: gatherers and dwarves. Gatherers gather all resources at nearly the same rate tha Greek villagers, the only difference being that they can only build farms (Norse infantry build all other buildings). Dwarves, trained from the town center just like gatherers, mine for gold much faster than normal gatherers in exchange for gathering food and wood much more slowly. The only exception to this are the dwarves of Thor who gather food and wood only slightly slower than gatherers and retain their fast mining speed.

Also unlike the Greeks and Egyptians who have to build resource specific buildings for their villagers to deposit the resources they gather, the Norse have the Ox Cart, a mobile resource drop off. The ox carts can simply follow the gatherers and dwarves wherever they go, reducing the time it takes to gather resources and deposit them into the player's reserves. All upgrades related to resource gathering can also be made through the carts rather than through any specific building. Norse players start with one ox cart at the beginning and additional carts can be trained through the town center.

Heroes
Like the Egyptians, the Norse possess a specific hero class: Hersirs, which can be trained indefinitely. Like priests they're powerful against myth units but weak against human soldiers. By worshipping the minor god Baldr, the norse can also use the Ragnorak god power to permanently turn all their gatherers and dwarves into Heroes of Ragonorak which are essentially Hersirs with stronger stats.

In the campaign, the Norse possess three unique heroes: The hermit Skult, the Valkyrie Reginleif, and in the Titans expansion, the Frost Giant, Folstag.

Favor
The norse gain favor through battle; the more units engaging the enemy, the faster favor is generated. Hersirs also passively generate a small amount of favor over time and gain more favor through battle than any other unit. A small amount of favor can also be gained by attacking huntable animals.

Raiding is an effective way to gain favor without losing too many soldiers in the process.

Titan
The Norse Titan unit is a titanic Frost Giant loosely resembling the Norse Troll myth unit, except that it wields a warhammer made of ice. This Titan is most likely Ymir, the primordial Frost Giant of Norse myth, and the Norse equivalent of the Greek Titans.

Units
The majority of the Norse military is composed of infantry which, instead of villagers, create buildings. This unique characteristic allows Norse players to use part of their attacking force to build a forward base near (or even directly within) their opponent's base and quickly create more units nearby to attack. While the infantry of the other civilizations primarily target calvary, certain norse infantry units specialize against other types of units. For example, the Throwing Axemen is a short ranged infantry unit that deals bonus damage against other infantry units and the Huskarl gains a bonus against archers. Norse have no archers (the anti-infantry role is taken by Throwing Axeman and Ballista), so don't train any anti-archer units when fighting against them. Due to the fact that there are no ranged heroes in the Norse military, they are particularly vulnerable against flying myth units. - Fortunately if you are playing as the Norse an upgrade allows Throwing Axemen to do extra damage to flying units.

The Norse also do not have a dedicated ranged siege unit such as the Greek Trebuchet and the Egyptian Catapult. Instead, they have the Portable Ram, a cheap melee siege unit that can be vulnerable to infantry and calvary walk up to buildings to attack, and the Ballista, a ranged unit that does respectable damage to buildings but is much more effective against infantry. Many of the Norse myth units also deal siege damage, so they can also serve and durable building destroyers.