[calmon]

I also want to add that Hinnom/Ashodod has answeres to most early/mid game tactics:

This counts for every giant race:
- Trampler: Don't work against giants in general
- Big Archer Troops: Archers love to kill with 1 hit because they scatter her arrows. Against giants there are a lot of hitted giants but to kill one you need mutiple hits. The target is big enough but also good protected and has a shield. (With Regeneration bless its really hard to do much damge.)
- Flyers: Giants normally don't use much archers and unprotected mages where flying units rock
- Awaken Awe Pretender: Giants have high morale and do a lot of damage. All things Cyclops (& Co) with awe hate!

And some additionals for the Fire Giants only:
- Flaming Arrow/Fire 9 Bless: 50/75 Fire Protection helps a lot!
- Etheral Forces: A Standard Magical Weapons works perfect here

The only problems they have are typical giant killers:
- "death" spells like soul slay, petrify, etc.. But the weaker forms like mind burn, smite, etc. don't help much (because of high hp). And you've to fight against this weaker form in early game!
- Masses of barbarian type of units

I don't think the icy giants are that a problem in a non-duel MP game. Normally they tend to ignore each other in early/mid game just because of the fact they use different heat/cold scales which makes attacking very exhausting and the fact that there are generally weaker victims (with weaker early game)! In mid/late game niefelheim types tend to losing power, the fire giants not.

In sum. People tend not to go in war with you in early game. Which is the basement for your very good mid/late game.

In moment i'm in a small ea mp game with formoria (paladin on llama). Also inside baalz with Lanka and evilhomer with hinnom. It will bring up some additional experiences.