Giants what are they good for?

Has anyone tried to raise the Battalion of Giants that were in Prussian service of Frederick Wilhelm? I wonder how they would work in game terms. they would technically have a longer reach in hand to hand combat, there Greater size and strength could also be beneficial in grenade throwing, also there imposing size must have some kind of morale effect on an opponent. Historically they are dismissed as an expensive curiosity.

I would suppose you could only have 1 battalion as they were hard to find

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Giants

Should they also be restricted to the Brandenburg-Prussian position ? Technically I suppose anyone could have raised such a unit but only Frederick Wilhem did.

That's an interesting one, it had never occurred to me to consider such a move.

It might include some sort of calculation based on population to determine how many 'giant' recruits you had?

Historically Prussia recruited across Europe, there was even a close call when an ambassador visited Berlin and was almost pressganged on the spot. some monarchs also sent recruits to Prussia to impress the king. a hansom bounty was also offered to recruiting parties abroad to get there man. I would guess that with it's 2,000,000 population Prussia would struggle to find the resruits from its own manpower.

Good point

A quick question-was the historic battalion ever used in the field or was it used only as a ceremonial unit?

never went to war the king drilled it, he was afraid it would get completey destroyed so it was limited to show and tell...

a lot of the recruits wern't too happy to be in Prussia either, at least one attempted to kill the king when he reviewed the unit, fired his ramrod at him I beleive.

The other problems with this unit included many members were idiots, had bad backs or very poor eye sight ..........all problems linked to found in people with genetic giantism. Plus in a fire fight most muskets fire high so being short is a positive advantage.

Frederick the Great viewed the whole unit as a freak show and disbanded it as being useless in military terms.

So if you do raise such a unit its probably best to treat it as a special type of Palace Guard Unit.