I'd agree that AI War (or other long-term strategy games) probably isn't too appropriate for a booth demo.
Related - I've always heard that modern competitive marketing treats everyone as if they have thirty-second attention spans. If you can't hook someone on imagery in thirty seconds in a venue where you're surrounded by other flashy things to see, things might get a bit difficult. People use booth babes and emotional faces/humans on game boxes and banners because we're innately programmed to pay attention to other human beings (And not because most gamers are male and sexually deprived, as hearsay would have it.) - I guess it could be viewed as somewhat unethical.
The idea is that you're not selling people the game, you're selling them the dream of the game. In the very first thirty seconds, you're supposed to tell them what the game will let them do or experience - rather than what playing the game is like. Mass Effect 2 sells itself with "Deep space exploration!" rather than the reality of "Fondle striated CG balls with your mouse cursor!".
So - here's a question - if you had to use imagery to represent and sell AVWW, what would it be? The banner on steam just shows the logo, which frankly isn't particularly engaging, and the glyph isn't particularly well-defined. I doubt you'd want to hit prospective customers with a huge wall of text either. You could go with a mascot - Minecraft has its creepers and more, and Terraria has its bunnies. The only qualification is that when you see it, you must instantly associate it with AVWW.
In my case, I'd nominate a guy with a hypersonic eagle embedded in his face.
