Squeezing more info from screenshots

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Harlan
Provost,
I think your Saltpetre suggestion must be spot on. The two other ingredients for gunpowder, charcoal and sulphur, are very common, so that must be the limiting factor. But do we know that it looks like a white powder

Yeah, saltpetre is a white crystalline solid; potassium nitrate to be more precise.

As for salt, yeah, I would agree with it being in the game, but the white powder is listed as a strategic resource with iron and horses and thus important in the manufacture of units. Salt would be a luxury and would not fit this description, hence I reckon it is saltpetre, not salt or cocaine (Imran, I presume a strategic resource as a little 'pick me up' for your military )

[Quarthinos]

I didn't say you could get huge amounts of saltpetre from a stable. Historically, bat caves and bird nesting grounds have been good for nitrates in general, which are also the major ingredient in fertilzer (and as some of you know, fertilzer and a common farm chemical, when mixed, make amfo, a fair explosive.) Stables are useful for testing, if you know about them beforehand, and the older the stable (100s of years is better), the more saltpetre you can get. If you move the stables, which the horses might not approve of...

As to what was shown at the demo, I think I'll start a new thread and go over the few insights given in the 30 minutes there.

[Urban Ranger]

I cannot recall that the Chinese used curved swords similar to the Arabic scimitar. The Chinese sword is straight-edged. There's a common Chinese weapon a bit similar to the falchion, but it's straight on the blunt edge and curved on the sharp edge.

Provost,

What about sea salt? That was very important.