Thor

Odin is a Norse major god who focuses on Great Hall units.

Attributes

God Power

Name	Description
Dwarven Mine	Creates a Gold Mine wherever the player wants it to be placed. The Gold Mine holds more gold if cast in later Ages and is mined faster. Any player can mine from it.

Technology

Name	Description
Hammer of Thunder	Gives Hersirs 15% damage buff and increased favor gain.
Dwarven Weapons	All human soldiers, heroes, ships, and buildings have improved attack.
Meteoric Iron Armor	All human units, heroes, and ships have reduced hack vulnerability. Ships also have reduced crush vulnerability.
Dragonscale Shields	All human units, heroes, and ships have reduced pierce vulnerability.

Unique Building

Name	Description
Dwarven Armory	Building that replaces the Armory. It has no Age restriction on technology research and enables three additional technologies. It also spawns a Dwarf for every technology researched from it.

Bonuses

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.

Minor Gods

Classical Age
Name	Focus
Freyja	Cavalry
Forseti	Berserks and Hersirs

Heroic Age
Name	Focus
Skadi	Throwing Axemen
Bragi	Berserks

Heroic Age
Name	Focus
Baldr	Siege and cavalry
Tyr	Infantry

Strengths

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

All of his bonuses boost the player's economy, even if not directly. His most obvious bonus is the ability to build a Dwarven Armory instead of an Armory. This building costs half as much as a normal Armory and can be built as early as the Archaic Age, allowing the player to advance from the Classical Age to the Heroic Age more quickly. Its technologies are cheaper, can be researched without any Age restrictions and, most impressively, it 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 Armory is expensive, requiring a total of 1,500 for each resource (each fourth line upgrade costs 500 of each resource), 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 be able to gather from a mine placed in an undefended location.

Mythology

"The thunder god, Thor was the son of Odin and Fjorgyn, the goddess of earth. He was large for a god, immensely strong, and a big eater (a cow could be a single meal). He loved contests of strength and was the main champion of the gods against their enemies, the frost giants. Farmers who appreciated his simple honesty and revulsion of evil worshiped him, rather than Odin, who was more attractive to those with the raiding spirit. Thor's weapon was a magic war hammer (bolts of lightning) with a huge head and short handle that never missed its target. He wore magic iron gauntlets to handle the white-hot hammer shaft and a belt that doubled his strength. Thor enjoyed the company of Loki despite the trickster's penchant for getting them both in trouble. The tales of their adventures are some of the richest in Norse mythology. In the Norse pantheon, Thor was the destroyer of evil. At Ragnarok, Thor was aligned against his friend Loki who had gone over to the side of the evil frost giants. Thor was destined to kill the grim serpent Jormungand, spawn of Loki, but die in the struggle. Anglo-Saxons gave Thor's name to the fifth day of their week, Thursday."
In-game compendium

Trivia

According to the Age of Mythology guide book, Thor was originally going to have an additional bonus that enabled cavalry to produce gold when attacking buildings.
- A similar effect would eventually be introduced with the Vikings technology in Retold for worshippers of Njord, although the latter is not available to Thor.
In Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition, the unlockable hero skin for the Community Event Challenge of March 2024 was Thor, replacing the Swedish Explorer. The custom Thor Explorer looks like the major god as portrayed in Age of Mythology, uses a large hammer in melee range, and reuses voice lines from Age of Mythology Norse, like Hersirs, with lower pitch.
Unlike the generic weapon and shield technologies, the ones unique to Thor do not change the visible equipment of units.