Well, my initial attempt at running the game was without any port forwarding on. Just in case, I turned it off again, as well as Windows Firewall (Again, for what it's worth). Same deal, nothing happening, but I can connect with a second window.

Wow, daisy chaining routers sounds like a hassle. But no, I only have one, which is a D-Link DIR-120. As far as I know, which is not released world-wide, so might be a tad hard to find a  manual for. Simple Ethernet, though, no wireless or any other fancy stuff. The computer uses a regular built in "Atheros AR8121/AR8113/AR8114 PCI-E Ethernet Controller", according to Windows - I'm afraid I've misplaced my manual and don't remember my exact motherboard make, so I can't tell you which one it is, exactly.

If it helps, I don't have an external IP at the moment - meaning that I'm definitely not going to host any games over the internet without the help of additional VPN software. I'm fine with that, but I'd really like to run a couple off-line matches with bots, just to get the hang of the rules and controls.
Does the game still try to perform some weird network magic in local mode? If yes, why?

Hello. I have an odd problem that prevents me from playing a game. It's been described a few times already, but I couldn't find a clear solution of any kind. Here's what happens.

When I try hosting a game, I get stuck at the join/add AI screen - hitting A, J or U does nothing. The rest of the game seems to work fine - I can chat in the lobby or disconnect, pressing Space or Ctrl in the game screen makes a sound (Yay!). Also, the status bar displays host (127.0.0.1, naturally) and ping (Fluctuates a bit) just fine. I can't send anything in the game's internal, chat, either. The game pelts me with "Your network connection timed out" messages, even in local mode.
I tried running two instances of the game (Local mode): one trying to host the game, the other trying to connect as a regular player. It works, but gets even more odd: if I connect to 127.0.0.1 or localhost, the second instance connects, I can see two Pvt. Grichmanns in both windows, but both instances get stuck. But if I try connecting to 192.168.0.101 (Home network IP, same machine, obviously), the second instance seems to work fine - it can join the game and use the chat.

I haven't tried joining somebody else's game from the lobby yet.

I'm running this on Windows Vista 64-bit, with Java version 1.6.0_24, and port 6260 forwarded to this computer on the router. I've tried disabling the firewall (For what Windows Firewall is worth, anyway) and antivirus (Avira, if that helps) to no effect.

Needless to say, I don't get any other network problems of this kind anywhere else. So what can it be?