The most interesting strategy news out of Leipzig is that AGEod is doing a World War I strategy game.

From the press release:

“World War One : La Grande Guerre 14-18” (WW1) is an historical grand strategy game, turn based, using an original engine specially developed for AGEOD by Lucas Cammisa (Calvinus) according to a Philippe Thibaut game design. “WW1” will you allow to play the full conflict, leading the destiny of the seven main fighting nations (France, Great-Britain, Russia, Italy, Imperial Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire).

The Thibaut game design is the board game La Grande Guerre 14-18. I’m not familiar with the game, but it has a lot of parts.

* “WW1” will offer single and multi player gaming (up to 4 simultaneous players) through LAN or TCP/IP through 1 grand campaign, 4 campaigns and several battle based scenarios.
* Players will be able to play wild cards disturbing opponents strategies in order to influence the course of the war.
* Each player will pick different war strategies at the beginning of the conflict allowing strategic surprise and great replay value.

More than two players for AGEod game is new, but a welcome change. Hopefully someone who has played the board game can chime in with info about how the strategy choice works in the board game version.

If you speak French, a brief interview with screenshots can be found at Cyberstratege. One shot shows the off map regions of Africa and the Pacific, as well as a large Eurasian map, so most of the war will be there. I love that so much of the Ottoman Empire is on screen.

World War One looks a lot like AGEod’s other games. A unit box at the bottom, a stylized map with province movement. There isn’t a lot of information about the engine or how the board rules will be translated to the computer version.

November 11 is the release date.