Norse

"Norse have no dedicated scouts, so must use a Berserk or other infantry. Norse infantry also construct buildings; their Villagers, called Gatherers, only collect resources. The Norse can also train Dwarves, which are specialized miners. Norse can have as many heroes as they can afford. They gain favor by fighting enemy soldiers and slaying animals."
In-game description

The Norse are a civilization in Age of Mythology. They are based on the old Norse religion and mythology.

Overview

Civilian unit: Gatherer, Dwarf.
- Dwarves gather gold 20% quicker, but food and wood 20% slower. Civilians can be converted into Berserks for a cost.
Resource drop-off site is Ox Cart, a mobile unit.
Civilians cannot construct buildings other than Houses, Farms, and Ox Carts.
Infantry construct all other buildings. Only infantry can repair buildings.
Favor is generated by human units and heroes causing damage to units and buildings, and passively from Hersirs and Godis.
Transport Ships cost 105 wood, have 150 hit points, a movement speed of 5.75, and 65% pierce armor.
Several buildings are cheaper, but have less hit points.
Start with a Berserk, an Ox Cart, and three Gatherers.
Start with 200 food, 150 wood, 100 gold.

Major Gods

Odin

Hunters gather 10% faster.
Great Hall units generate +25% favor in battle.
Human units and heroes regenerate 0.5 hit points per second.
2 Raven scouts spawn once the first Temple is built, and respawn a short time after being killed.

Thor

Start with three Dwarves instead of three Gatherers.
Dwarves cost -10 gold, and gather food and wood nearly as fast as Gatherers.
Builds Dwarven Armory instead of Armory. Dwarven Armory can be built and research upgrades in any age, and can research three additional technologies.
Receive a free Dwarf for each Dwarven Armory upgrade researched.

Loki

Damaging enemy units can spawn myth units. (Human soldiers contribute 10%; Hersirs 50% of damage dealt.)
Human soldiers and heroes +25% counter damage.
Buildings (constructed by military units) are constructed 10% faster.
Ox Carts are 50% cheaper.
Transforming Gatherers and Dwarves into Berserks is 50% cheaper.

Freyr

Technologies cost -50% food, wood, and gold, but take 150% longer to research.
Hill Fort and Hill Fort units +10% damage.
Repairing buildings is free.
Gatherers and Dwarves can also repair any building. They repair walls 50% faster than normal builders.

Minor Gods

Classical Age

Name	Major Gods	Focus
Freyja	Odin, Thor and Freyr	Cavalry
Forseti	Loki and Thor	Berserks and Hersirs
Heimdall	Loki and Odin	Towers and navy
Ullr	Freyr	Defenses and Longhouse units

Heroic Age

Name	Major Gods	Focus
Skadi	Odin and Thor	Throwing Axeman
Bragi	Loki, Thor, and Freyr	Berserks
Njord	Loki and Odin	Ships and Hill Forts
Aegir	Freyr	Myth Units and Siege Weapons

Mythic Age

Name	Major Gods	Focus
Baldr	Odin and Thor	Siege and Cavalry
Tyr	Odin, Thor, and Loki	Infantry
Hel	Loki and Freyr	Myth units
Vidar	Freyr	Human soldiers and heroes

Units

Civilians

Name	Description
Gatherer	Gathers all resources (except favor) but cannot construct buildings (other than Farms)
Dwarf	Works like a Gatherer but is faster at mining gold and slower at gathering other resources
Ox Cart	Mobile drop site

Human Soldiers

Town Center and Longhouse
Name	Description
Berserk	Infantry which is good against cavalry. Can be trained from the Town Center, upgraded from Gatherers as well as Dwarves, Archaic Age onwards. Can also be trained at the Longhouse, Classical Age onwards

Longhouse
Name	Description
Throwing Axeman	Classical Age infantry good only against other infantry
Hirdman	Classical Age infantry good only against cavalry

Great Hall
Name	Description
Raiding Cavalry	Classical Age cavalry good only against archers
Jarl	Heroic Age cavalry good against human soldiers

Hill Fort
Name	Description
Huskarl	Heroic Age infantry good against archers

Siege Weapons

Hill Fort
Name	Description
Portable Ram	Heroic Age siege unit good against buildings
Ballista	Mythic Age siege unit good against units and ships

Heroes

Temple and Great Hall
Name	Description
Hersir	Infantry Hero unit which can be trained from the Temple, Archaic Age onwards, as well as from the Longhouse, Classical Age onwards. Passively generates favor, collects Relics

Great Hall
Name	Description
Godi	Heroic Age ranged hero

Ships

Name	Description
Longboat	Greater attack than other archer ships and has transport capacity of 5, but is slower
Dreki	Same as Greek and Egyptian close-combat ships
Dragon Ship	Same as Greek siege ships

Myth Units

Dock
Name	Description
Kraken	A melee unit which can use its tentacles to drown and destroy enemy ships
Jormun Elver	A ranged unit which can thrash its tail to flip over enemy ships in front of it

Name	Description
Titan	The Norse Titan unit is a gargantuan hammer-wielding Frost Giant loosely resembling Ymir, the ancestor of the Norse Giants

Resource Gathering

Unlike the other civilizations, the Norse have two villager units: Gatherers and Dwarves. Gatherers gather resources at the same rate as Greek Villagers and are very similar to them in most respects. Dwarves, meanwhile, cost gold to train instead of food, mine gold 20% faster than Gatherers and gather food and wood 20% slower. However, Thor's Dwarves gather food and wood only slightly slower than Gatherers. Neither Gatherers nor Dwarves can build any buildings except Farms; the other buildings are built by Norse infantry.

While other civilizations build resource-specific drop-off buildings, the Norse have the Ox Cart, a unit and mobile resource drop-off site. Ox Carts can simply follow gatherers and Dwarves wherever they go, saving building time. All resource-related technologies are researched at Ox Carts. Norse players start the game with one Ox Cart and can train additional ones at the Town Center.

Norse Heroes

Similarly to the Egyptians, the Norse have a specific hero class: Hersirs, which can be trained in any number. They are powerful against myth units but only modestly effective against human soldiers. By worshiping the minor god Baldr, the Norse can use the Ragnarok god power to instantly turn all their Gatherers and Dwarves into Heroes of Ragnarok, which are essentially stronger versions of the Hersir.

In the campaign, the Norse have five unique heroes: The hermit Skult, the Valkyrie Reginleif, the two dwarven heroes Eitri and Brokk and, in The Titans, the Frost Giant King Folstag.

Favor

The Norse gain favor while engaging in combat. The generation system in Retold is very different from the original game. Instead of favor bounties depending on each individual target, the favor generation rate depends on the attacker and the amount of damage they have dealt, as well as multipliers of the combat favor rate for certain targets.

Like in the original, the trainable Norse heroes, i.e. Hersir and Godi, also trickle 0.01 favor per second simply by existing. The myth technology Hammer of Thunder granted by Thor doubles the Hersir's passive generation to 0.02 favor per second.

Attacks from different unit types generate favor at different rates:

Human soldiers, Heroes, Gatherers, and Dwarves: 1 per 80 damage dealt.
Ships: 1 per 160 damage dealt.
Odin's Great Hall units (Hersir, Jarls, Godi, Raiding Cavalry): 1 per 64 damage dealt.
Norse myth units that are trained from Temples and Docks, as well as the Nidhogg: 1 per 160 damage dealt.

Buildings, unmentioned units (Walking Woods, Fimbulwinter Wolves), and damage dealt by god powers do not generate any favor.

Certain target types also have their own multipliers when damaged:

Huntables - animals that contain food (does not include Serpents, even though villagers use bows against them): 2×
Herdable animals: 10×
Chickens ("NonConvertableHerdable"): 10×
Buildings that shoot (Sentry Towers do not count until upgraded): 0.5×
Wall pieces and Gates: 0×
Other buildings: 0.1×

Additionally, once 100 total favor from combat has been gathered, the rate of gain begins to slow down. This reduction increases linearly between 100 and 300 total favor gathered, reducing the rate to 0.5x upon gathering 300 favor from combat. This reduction happens regardless of whether the gained favor was spent or left in the stockpile. This reduction applies only to favor gain from combat.

Military

The Norse military is dominated by infantry. These units can also build buildings, allowing Norse players to use part of their attacking force to build a forward base near their opponent's town, quickly create more units nearby then attack. While many of the infantry of the other civilizations target cavalry, certain Norse infantry units counter other types of units. The Throwing Axeman is a short-ranged infantry unit that deals bonus damage to other infantry units and the Huskarl gains a bonus against archers.

Originally, the Norse had no ranged soldiers (the anti-infantry role was taken by Throwing Axemen and Ballistae), so there was no need to train anti-archer units when fighting them. As the Norse have no ranged heroes, they were particularly vulnerable to flying myth units.

The Norse also don't have a dedicated ranged anti-building siege unit such as the Greek Petrobolos and the Egyptian Catapult. Instead, they have the Portable Ram, a cheap melee siege unit that can be vulnerable to infantry and cavalry as it lumbers up to the buildings it attacks, and the Ballista, a ranged unit that does respectable damage to buildings but is much better against infantry and archers. To compensate for this, many Norse myth units also deal crush damage, particularly the Mountain Giant.

Starting Conditions

Each of Age of Mythology's civilizations has different starting conditions in a standard game. The Norse start out with a Town Center, a Berserk, an Ox Cart, and two Gatherers (Odin and Loki) or two Dwarves (Thor).

Trivia

The names of the three Norse warships all refer to the exact same ship. Longboat is another name for Longship, which is the English name for the typical Norse exploration and warship, while the Norse name for such a ship is Drakkar. Dragon Ship is the literal English translation of the word Drakkar. Thus, all three Norse ship names refer to a typical-length Longship.
- A more suitable name for the current Drakkar would have been Snekke, which was used for smaller longships. A more suitable name for the current Dragon Ship would have been Skeid (skeið), which referred to a large or splendid oceangoing warship. Skeid is currently used as a prefix for upgraded Dragon Ships.
While primarily influenced from the namesake Norsemen, there are also references to other Germanic peoples too:
- The Throwing Axeman's history files refer to the Franks, Germanic peoples who would go on to conquer the bulk of Roman Gaul and eventually become Kingdom of France as their culture adopted more Roman customs.
- The Jarl's history files refer to the Saxons, a tribe from northern Germania who were influenced by Norse culture since their tribe lived near the Jutland Peninsula (in modern-day Denmark) prior to migrating to and conquering Roman Britannia along with the Angles, their Low German cousins, and the Jutes, who were the Norsemen living in the Jutland peninsula. Huskarls (or "Housecarls" after the Battle of Hastings in 1066) were also present as a warrior class in Anglo-Saxon England, serving as the elite guards for the Jarls.
- Hill Forts, which resemble motte-and-bailey castles, were introduced into most of Northern Europe by the Normans, who were Danish and Norwegian Vikings who settled in France and adopted French culture and customs in exchange for land, wealth, and an end to raids against the Kingdom of France.
- The shields of several upgrade unit lines are kite shields, which spread in Europe around 1000 AD and were popularised by the Normans during their conquest of England and Sicily.
- The name of the Thurisaz Rune technology also derives from Proto-Germanic, rather than Old Norse.
Some of the AI players' names are related to Norse colonies: Faeros, Greenland, Helluland, Markland, and Novgorod. The first four are/were in North America, and the fifth is a major city in modern-day Russia; it was also one of the two major Viking settlements settled near the Volga River in Eurasia, the other being Kiev, which is the capital of modern-day Ukraine.