This started out initially with my curiosity about the best way to utilise Thor's bonuses. I decided to play out several short games as Thor, note down the achievements I made, and then compare them to how I went with the other norse civs. So that's what I did. I played four games as each, and noted down my achievements, and then averaged them. I'm pretty sure I made a few slipups in putting the numbers through the calculator, (and I'll be damned if I go through them again) but you get the idea.
No, I'm not perfect - so these include mistakes for moving resource gathering, idle TC time, etc.
These times are averages from four games taken from a cutoff time of just after 6 minutes. Most of the time by that stage, I'd have one or two longhouses, two or three hersir, plus my starting ulfsark. Depending on how fast I got the longhouses up, I also had up to 2 raiders and TA's.
| Civilization | Villagers | Dwarves | |||||
Thor
I could advance fastest with Thor. I was not a very fast player in the alpha and I doubt I ever will be, but by going strongly on dwarves to save food, I could advance early. I put first two dwarves on gold, then added two as I went along so I could keep up dwarf production. I'd pick dwarves off food before I advanced to gather more wood and gold, and it gave me a fairly good econ to put up two longhouses and get raiders out fast. Thor's unique tech (Pig Sticker) seems to me a very nice tech. It's not as powerful as hunting dogs in hunting speed boost, but is cheaper, and makes your vils less likely to get killed by an animal. The favor cost is the hard part - you need to kill a few animals to get the 1 favor to pay for it. However with 2 or more dwarves gathering gold, the 70 gold pricetag is almost nothing.
Odin
I generally had the strongest econ with Odin. His bonus doesn't provide as much of an advantage as the hunting dogs tech, but it's still a boost to hunting. His GP is an even bigger boost to food gathering, if used on largish deer herd - as I find is the best use - it can yield 3 or 4 extra animals - 450-600 bonus food, that is in a convenient location. With Odin I found it easier to get Throwing Axes at the advance - these aren't as good for making a quick attack, but they can help you get longhouses and houses up faster if you advanced late and opted for econ.
Odin's loss of the ravens in archaic kinda sucks, I have to say - once you get to classical you're too absorbed with creating units and attacking to bother scouting. In the alpha I forgot about ravens once I reached classical, I just left them with plenty of waypoints to keep themselves occupied.
Loki
Loki is more flexible early on thanks to his cheaper ox carts, but is the least powerful economically overall. It can be hard finding a 'sweet spot' for efficient gathering early on - Loki suffers only half the price of an oxcart, which means getting that third one out is easier. Loki also gets much more benefit from the hersir trained during the classical advance - since he gets a substantial bonus to them that pays off big time with good micro early in the game. As Thor and Odin I usually build only two hersir while advancing, to get my longhouse(s) up faster. As Loki though, you aren't deterred from building more, so to get a stronger force earlier, if you have the food, build hersir. Loki's god power can help scouting quite a bit early on, which makes it harder to miss critical resources.
